


Dulce et decorum est

by nerddowell



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War I, M/M, Soldiers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-04 02:13:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 29,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2905490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/nerddowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>World War One!AU. Featuring letter writing, hopefully not awful characterisation, and conscientious objectors!Jehan, Combeferre and Grantaire. 1st Person POV: Jean Prouvaire.</p><p>Previously (tentatively) titled Somewhere In Between. <strong>Also</strong>, I noticed some geographical errors (Chapters 1 & 2 were set in/featured details specific to Kent in the South-East of England, and 3 onwards was set in Yorkshire in the North-East). This has now been rectified and <strong>the whole story is now set in Yorkshire as a home county</strong>. Apologies for the mistake and for any confusion on either count!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. SUMMER 1916

**Author's Note:**

> Ugh, I'm actually really nervous about posting this because I'm so out of practise with writing. And I'm super rusty with this fandom, too. So... not be gentle, but constructive criticism would be very much appreciated! Beta'ed by [Mia](http://trickstersweet.tumblr.com) on Tumblr, with very gratitude. So thank. Wow. Any remaining errors my own.  
> Also, accompanying fanmix is [here on 8tracks](http://8tracks.com/ig_sparke/heaven-or-hell-or-somewhere-in-between)!

**SUMMER 1916**

There are butterflies over my head, drifting on the wings of a breeze that ruffles the frizzy baby curls clustered around my temples as I pedal my bicycle towards the easternmost fields of the O'Malleys' orchard. It's about time for the late summer bud grafting, so Oliver - Courfeyrac - will be out with the others, sweat on his brow and tongue poking between his lips in concentration as he focuses on not sawing off his own fingers before Charlie straps the new budding branch in place, ready for the tree to start bearing new fruits in three summers' time. Courfeyrac told me a few weeks ago that that was true; that Adam and Eve had to have come at least three years after Eden in the Bible story, because that's how long it takes for a tree to first bear fruit. He insisted, though, that the carnal knowledge had been there from the beginning, with a wink and a mischievous glint in his eye that told me he had plenty of carnal knowledge himself.

The path running alongside the beck which rings the orchard fields is lumpy with stones and clods of grass, making my bicycle judder over the uneven ground, but the hum of bees around the cowslips and poppies that spring up beneath the hedgerows more than makes up for it. This summer has been almost unseasonably - for England - warm. The minute I get out of school for the day, I'm slinging my satchel over my back, rolling up my shirtsleeves and undoing my tie, letting it flap in the slipstream I create as I cycle down towards the farms, my own house, and Courfeyrac. A couple of times I've simply walked, picking blackberries off the hedges and trying to catch butterflies in my hat, but today I'm too eager to see him. Today is not the day for a leisurely ride; today is my birthday, with the promise of an evening picnic to be fulfilled when I see him.

I catch sight of him under a huge, gnarled Braeburn tree in the furthest corner of the orchard. His face, reddened and freckled by the sun, splits into a huge grin and he takes the fence at a running leap, vaulting over it as easily as if it hadn't been there at all. At school he was always the best at things like that; shinning up trees to drop acorns on the schoolmaster's head, leaping over the box in gym, scoring goals in playground games of football where pullovers and satchels full of untidy, half-completed homework marked the goalposts. I ring the bell frantically, laughing: "Get out of the way! No brakes!"

He side-steps neatly, breaking out into his own laughter, chasing me down the path like a child after a toy hoop, desperate to catch it and roll it again. I eventually manage to stop beside an oak, breathless with laughter and with the wild strawberries I picked half an hour ago crushed against my schoolbooks in my basket. I groan with disappointment, and he plucks one of the books out and licks mashed strawberry off the cover, laughing.  
"It tastes just as good crushed, I don't mind."

"But they were supposed to be a _gift_." I smile, unable to help myself, and take the book back. "Although you weren't supposed to slobber all over my books when I gave them to you!"

He smirks again and sucks strawberry juice off his fingers, one by one, full pink lips tight around the slim digits. "You're right," he says with a wicked expression, "I'll save that for you." And before I can protest, before I can stop him, his tongue is dragging up my cheek, leaving a sticky trail of strawberry-scented saliva behind. I wail, rubbing furiously at my cheek with my shirt cuff, and he howls with laughter, doubled over against the dark trunk of the oak tree. My glowering at him predictably has no effect whatsoever, but he throws his arm around my shoulders and tosses my books into the basket of my bicycle.

"Happy birthday, by the way." The smile lighting his face is beautiful, broad and white and sincere, as he takes the handlebars of my bicycle and wheels it smoothly across the footbridge, waiting on the other side of the beck for me to follow. "Come on, then!" He calls cheerfully, grinning, "Unless you want to go hungry tonight! I've already told your mother that you're with me this evening. Seemed rather disappointed she wouldn't get to see you blow out your candles, but I've matches with me and a couple of slices of cake so I daresay we can make do."

I follow him along another footpath, away from the orchard and the village beyond it, out into the open fields. Evening primrose blossoms at the edges of meadows filled with daisies and field mouse-ear and buttercups, and Courfeyrac picks a small, sun-tinted bloom to hold under my chin. He pretends to study the golden reflection carefully until he looks up and grins, slipping the flower behind my ear. I roll my eyes and swoop down, pulling up another buttercup to do the same to him. He rubs his stomach with a theatrical lick of his lips - "Mmmm, butter!" - before parking my bicycle beside a stile and helping me up over it into the meadow beyond.

The picnic turns out to be cold chicken sandwiches, bottles of apple juice crushed at the orchard and poured into the morning's washed milk bottles. We eat the sandwiches before climbing the cherry tree beneath the reddening sun, picking so many that they fill the pockets of our trousers and Courfeyrac's cap; we gorge ourselves on the fruit and on sweet walnuts from the neighbouring fields, throwing cherry pits at one another and having contests to see who can spit them the farthest. Hours pass this way until the sky is pink, the sun beginning to sink, the clouds painted in tones of lavender and periwinkle and rose. I have always been captivated by the sunset, but his curls ruffling in the same breeze that rustles the tree's leaves catches my attention. We descend slowly from the tree, him helping me navigate my way down, and he smiles at me, gently cupping my chin with two fingers as he presses a soft, berry-flavoured kiss to my lips.

I gaze at him, butterflies in my stomach. There have been kisses before, stolen amongst the apple trees with the scent of summer and crushed fruits in our noses, flavoured with tart blueberries, juices smeared over our mouths like lipstick, but we were half children then; we are men now, grown and ready, and when I meet his eyes, they are dark and bright. He breathes softly against my lips before pulling me in again, the picnic forgotten, the world narrowed to his mouth against mine and the starbursts I can feel in my chest, as though fireworks are going off inside my body. One of those moments you remember on your deathbed, no matter how much pain you are in; an anchor that you are constantly pulled back to, the moment the realisation of love really struck. Because that is what it is; I am in love, with him, and he with me. I know it in the press of his lips against mine, in the stroke of his fingers through my hair, in the thud of his pulse beneath the palm of my hand. I pull back, look at him, and he smiles.

 

* * *

 

The officers are standing in the square when school lets out for the day, gesturing with swordsticks and speaking in loud, booming voices, pointing to boys in the crowd. "You there, son! Are you ready to fight for your country? Defend her against the Hun?" The boy he's pointing at, a young redhead I vaguely remember seeing in the back of my classroom, nods, slapping his chest with one ink-stained hand. My stomach flips. Of course they're not here to give news of how the war is going; they're here to sign people up. There are still families, God knows, who are waiting for the telegram, for the bodies to arrive, girls who spend their days in the fields picking flower petals off not with "He loves me. He loves me not." but, "Dead. Missing. Alive."  I see them, tear-smudged cheeks and shaking hands as they come in to pick up children, brothers, sisters. Sometimes, they're still clutching the envelope with its sombre black edges, and though the tears are all grief, there's an expression of relief in their eyes. I can sympathise; not knowing must be a thousand times worse than hearing their husband, brother, son, cousin, is dead.

I push forward through the crowd with apologies to those I elbow out of the way, the dark head of wavy hair whose owner is currently writing his name on the conscription sheet making me nervous. The boy turns around, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, and if the movement - so familiar it might as well have been my own arm, my own body - the bottom feels like it's going to fall out of my stomach. _Courfeyrac_.

Courfeyrac smiles at me, but it quickly slides off his face as he sees my horrorstruck expression. I clutch at his arm, shaking my head wildly, panic rising. If Courfeyrac is shipped away to this war, who knows when - or if - I will see him again? Of course the idea of fighting for his country, defending her and her allies against the invading Germans would appeal to Courfeyrac; beautiful, noble, idiotic Courfeyrac, with his taste for heroics and his passionate belief in helping the underdog. But - and I feel horribly selfish even thinking it - Courfeyrac doesn't only have a duty to Britain. What about his duty to his family - his mother, his sisters - to me? Me, who would be alone. Me, who would fall apart without Courfeyrac's bright smile to greet me at the end of the day, without the taste of apples on his lips, without the hard callused hands and gentle fingers carding through my hair, weaving it with crowns of wildlflowers that would attract ladybirds and bees to settle in my curls?

"Courfeyrac," I manage to choke out, desperate. "Courfeyrac, _no._ "

I can feel the hard stares of the others in the crowd on the back of my neck, well aware that a blush is rising in my cheeks. But I can't stand to think of it, my Courfeyrac - my Oliver - marching to what could quite possibly be his death in an ill-fitting uniform and worse-fitting boots. Courfeyrac, so bright and lively, snuffed out like a light. I can't breathe. Courfeyrac gently leads me aside, brushing the tears away, and tilts my chin to force me to meet his gaze. He cracks a joke, as I knew he would, but his eyes are serious as he playfully tugs a lock of my hair.

"I'll come back," he says, sombre as a funeral, all humour gone from his eyes, and the tone of his voice rings with a promise. "I swear to you, Jehan, I will come back. I'll come back and you'll never be able to get rid of me."

It doesn't make me laugh like it would usually. Instead all that my throat can force up is a wet glob of misery, a sob that rattles in my mouth and sprays out like poison. There are children I have to teach tomorrow watching me, brows knitted, confused as to why their stoic master would possibly be gasping into his friend's shirt, shaking. And then the first whisper comes, loud enough to deafen.  
"Coward."

Before I know it, accusations are flying from all sides, and Courfeyrac's face hardens, his hand on my shoulder providing no comfort at all. He snaps at them, harsh words intended to rebuff, but lets go of my shoulder all the same. White feathers are shoved into my braces, pockets, every space people can find, branding me for what I am. A coward. People spit insults as I remove them with shaking hands, head reeling, nausea coiling in my stomach. But even as this happens, the thought to rescind my comment  - to take the pen, and the paper, and to write my own name down, underneath Courfeyrac's - doesn't even occur to me. Whether out of self-preservation or just the inability to think clearly, I don't know. But eventually, after I've hyperventilated my way back to normal breathing, I somehow find the strength to stand properly, and my voice - hoarse and tense - returns.  
"Not cowardice. Conscientious objections."

Another young man beside me, with neatly combed hair and a pair of wire-framed glasses, nods. "I regret to inform you gentlemen that I won't be signing myself up either. I understand the necessity of war to protect Britain and her allies, but I'm afraid my Hippocratic oath requires me to 'do no harm', which, as I'm sure you can imagine, would make life rather difficult for a soldier. And although I appreciate that the army is no doubt in constant need of medics in the field, I have an elderly and infirm grandfather here in the village whom I feel I have a duty to care for. I apologise, gentlemen, but you can see my predicament." He spreads his hands in a helpless gesture and smiles gently at the officers, but receives his own white feather and the brand of coward in return anyway. He sighs and shrugs; it seems he was expecting that response. Nevertheless, he gives my hand a gentle squeeze as he walks away, heading up the hill towards my own residence, visibly stopping at the chemist to pick up some remedy or another on his way home.

Courfeyrac follows his retreating back with curious eyes, but turns when I whisper his name again. Accepting defeat as I know I must - Courfeyrac, however much he cares about his family and I, and wants to protect us - was always going to sign up the moment he could. Out of respect for the law, he waited until he was seventeen, but here he is, his name in stark black ink on the sheet and his rifle already as good as picked up and cocked. I was never going to change his mind. He smoothes his thumb over my rumpled lapel, eyes calm and sad.

"I will come back," he promises.

I almost believe him.


	2. AUTUMN 1916

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **N.B.:** the letters from Courfeyrac in this chapter and the consequent chapters include quotes from real letters sent by World War One soldiers. If you want to read them for yourselves, I found the majority of them [here](http://www.arthursletters.com/), [here](http://spartacus-educational.com/FWWletters.htm) and [here](http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/debateni/blogs/first-world-war-centenary-letters-from-the-trenches-reveal-horror-faced-by-our-boys-30480316.html)!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very kindly beta'ed by [laurencombeferre](http://archiveofourown.org/users/laurencombeferre), a very skilled writer herself and a generally lovely human being!

**AUTUMN 1916**

The train station is filled with families, mothers with tears in their eyes and wives who cling to their husbands, leaving lipstick and tear stains on neatly shaven cheeks, as I say goodbye to Courfeyrac. His mother and sisters cluster around him like the fairy ring of mushrooms in our meadow back at home; he smiles and kisses each of their cheeks, gives little Eleanor a last ride on his shoulders whilst she sobs into his combed hair - cut so short it doesn't even look like him anymore, which is almost a relief. This isn't Courfeyrac, just someone with his name; my Courfeyrac is back in the orchard, hard at work, as he should be, not heading away to fight this stupid war. He catches my eye, and gives me a sad smile. I wish that the platform were empty; that I could press myself to him one last time, kiss him, taste the berries Eleanor fed him on his tongue; but I have to make do with a smile and a wave.

The train guard is calling for boarding. I help him stow his pack under his seat, and he grasps my hand almost desperately as I try to shove it into the small space. Drawing the curtains for the briefest moment, he leans forward and presses the briefest kiss to my lips, glittering dark eyes frantic as he pulls away. The fear he's not yet let me see is escaping in full force, and it's all I can do to cling to him, to try and rub the tension out of his shoulders with a shaking hand on his back. He gives a shuddering exhale against the side of my neck before opening the curtains again, revealing our pale faces to the people filling the station platform. The train is readying to leave, and he quickly ushers me away, having to wrestle my frantic fingers off his hand as he promises to write. The train doors close, the guard blows his whistle, and he is steaming away. It hurts almost too much to watch.  
  


* * *

 

_6th September 1916_

_Dear J,_

_As always, I miss everyone. Kiss Mother and the girls for me. Has Ellie found anyone else to give her rides yet? I should hope so; she's getting rather too heavy for me to do it anymore. Is everyone well? I assume they must be, otherwise I would have heard. You would write, at least, I hope. Of course you would. I know that. I'm sure you're desperate to hear news of how I am; other than the blasted heat, which is a devil if you're marching all day in woollen uniforms, I am well. No doubt a little leaner than when I left, but I daresay I could've stood to lose a few pounds, and so I'd say the army has done me a favour. Smile, for goodness' sake. I was joking._

_The other lads in our section are an interesting bunch, I can tell you. So far, we've an Irishman called Jack, although naturally we are all referred to as 'Private' and then our surnames, so he's 'Private Feuilly'; he seems a decent sort. He's utterly outraged, so he says, about the treatment of our allies at the hands of the Hun, especially about the Serbs. Many entertaining nightly conversations, I can assure you, especially between he and Enjolras (whom you are never, under any circumstances, to call by his first name, which is Ambrose (after his father, I gather), under pain of his ingenuity. A fate worse than death, clearly. Perhaps being force-fed military food.) Enjolras is difficult to describe in words deemed polite; I feel one of the other lads phrases it best with 'bleedin'  terrifying'. He's certainly rather intense, and makes lots of speeches about freeing Europe from the oppressive imperialistic reaches of the Enemy. Very grandiose, but also very difficult to argue with. He makes Joly nervous; but then, poor fellow is always nervous. Perhaps it's the Welsh accent, though, making him sound that way. Joly was training to be a doctor, so he's been recruited to the medical corps, but he eats with us when he can and tends to take everybody's pulses obsessively. We're allowed to call him Iwan, if the captain isn't listening, which sadly is never. Still, the invitation is there. Lastly, there's a Scotsman who seems to terrify Joly more than the thought of an epidemic in the trenches does; I can't understand why, because he's a real gentle giant. Bahorel (Malcolm, in case you're wondering), spends most of the time we're not supposed to be shooting the enemy or being shelled arm-wrestling with Feuilly and I. Annoyingly, I've yet to win._

_We've yet to go to the trenches, of course. In fact, most of what I've written we have been doing is training, ready for the real thing. Tomorrow, I hear, is the day we shall be marched out, pipes playing, to join the real fighting. Bahorel, naturally, is extremely excited; I rather fear he thinks it's going to be some sort of camping holiday in the south of France where all we'll have to do is shoot a bit and try not to get killed. He may be right. Optimism surely can't go amiss, and he's such a cheerful sort of fellow that it's extremely difficult not to believe him when he says so. Even so, I have my apprehensions. If it was that easy, surely more men would have come back. But I don't want to worry you. Bahorel is from the Highlands, and all that thin mountainous air must have addled his brains somewhat. (I certainly hope he isn't reading this over my shoulder; I shall catch a bruise or worse for certain in our next arm-wrestling match if he somehow caught that!)_

_Other than that, there's not much to write. Naturally, there are things we aren't allowed to say, so my hands are tied in some respects, but nevertheless, I hope this suffices for a first letter. To satisfy your curiosity if nothing else. I hope you are well, and that you write back soon. Time can move awfully slowly here sometimes, and no doubt hearing your voice - even if only reading your letters out, in my head - will improve things considerably._

_All my love, always._

_Oliver._

_Or, Private Courfeyrac of the The King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (Or, in this trench, King George's Best Scallywags, which Bahorel likes to call us). I rather like that title, I must confess._

* * *

 

The young doctor from the square turns out to be called Stephen Combeferre, which is how he introduces himself when I, my mind fully occupied with Courfeyrac's letter and all the things I want to write back about, hurtle into him like a loose cannonball. He helps me retrieve all of my books from the path, placing them carefully back into my bicycle basket, and offers me a hand to help get me back on my feet. His hand is cool, strong and sure, but soft somehow; very unlike Courfeyrac's broad, warm grip. His smile is the same, soft and intelligent and gentle, and he pushes his glasses up his nose as he focuses on my face.  
"I do apologise, I wasn't looking where I was going."

"No, I - it was all my fault. I apologise too." My face burns red beneath my already vibrant mop (as Courfeyrac always calls it, somewhat rich coming from him, given that before the Army barber visit his own locks brushed his collar and had all the grace and appearance of a winter hedgerow), and Combeferre chuckles quietly, picking a crunchy oak leaf out of a tangle of hair like copper wire.

"You teach at the school, do you not? John Prouvaire, I believe?" Hearing my name said properly, rather than the French affectation I've been given to amongst friends since my mid-teens, falls almost foreign on my ears. He seems confused by my reaction, and attempts to correct himself. "Is it not John? Or have I mispronounced the surname?"

"No," I say hastily, shaking my head, and his face calms again, eyes curious. "No, no, the surname is fine. And... and I was christened John, so you're entirely right there. But... I've not been called that since..." Since my father died when I was twelve. John was the boy left behind, grieving after the death of his father, and so I changed my name to try and become someone else, someone strong, someone who would not fall apart at the slightest disaster. Of course, Courfeyrac's enlistment on that afternoon in July, there in the square - when I had first met Combeferre, felt the warm grip on my hand, seen the bright blue eyes sparkling behind the wire-rimmed glasses - proved me wrong. Combeferre clears his throat quietly, dragging me back from my spiralling thoughts, and I smile weakly and apologise until I notice that his attention lies not on me, but on a Peacock butterfly resting on a cowslip beside my head.

The pure childlike delight on his face as he slowly extends his index finger, catching the butterfly as its wings flutter in the breeze, letting it perch on his finger as he breathes out quietly, grinning at me over the spread wings. He lets it go, tracing the swift flight away from us towards mine and Courfeyrac's meadow with his gaze before looking back at me, excitement bright in his eyes.

"It's late in September for them still to be about," he says, picking the brooklime and bird's foot trefoil by the beckside in a small bouquet. As we walk slowly toward home - past the orchard, where I can't help inhaling the scent of fermenting apples, and Combeferre surprises me by catching a windfall as it drops suddenly out of the branches above our heads - he carefully weaves them into a crown, adding chicory and dandelions and harebit as we pass different clusters of bright flowers. By the time we've reached the edges of the village, as marked by the stonework of the butcher's on Main Street and the conversion of the mud footpath to paved cobbles, there's a beautiful, delicately woven crown of flowers in his hands. He gently lays it on my head, the perfume of the flowers mingling with the tendrils of hair that, no matter how I comb and comb them, never lie flat. He smiles.

"You look like a fairy prince. Oberon, perhaps, or Robin Goodfellow." He plays with one of the leftover blooms, a tiny field forget-me-not. The small blue flower immediately brings to mind the meadow, the kiss that still tasted of cherries and walnuts, and I let out a shaky breath. Wreathes of flowers for my hair has always been something I only let Courfeyrac do for me; the action of weaving them together, knotting them into delicate circlets, and placing them amongst the wind-ruffled curls on my head has always been his, special between the two of us. I frequently walk around the village after our evenings together still picking forget-me-nots and small, pink-tipped daisies out of my hair, before anyone can see them and accuse us of being what we are: sweethearts, lovers, schoolboys with eyes only for each other. But we are not boys any more, as we were in the meadow, when I fell in love with him. We're men, he away at war, I here in England with only the butterflies and poppies blustering in the autumn breezes for company.

I do Combeferre a disservice. Of course he is here, too. But nevertheless, I take the crown off, my hands shaking, and try not to let the tears fill my eyes. It drops to the ground, splashing in a puddle, and the sight of the muddy, brackish water staining the delicate petals grey makes the tears fall despite how I've been biting my lip to keep them in. Combeferre makes a sound of quiet distress, reaching into his pocket for a handkerchief, but I bat him away almost angrily. Blaming him for making me cry with a stupid flower crown is unfair, but I can hardly blame the person whose fault it really is - Courfeyrac, for bringing back all those memories, for making it as though he's only just departed all over again, bringing back all the pain and the worry that I shall never see him again. Combeferre wipes the tears away anyway, and squeezes my hand gently, an echo of the reassurance he offered at Courfeyrac's conscription. It makes everything worse and better at the same time.

"Did you not like it?" he asks, a frown knitting his dark brows. He doesn't understand my tears; he feels he has insulted me, perhaps feels that I resent being given garlands of flowers, which are traditionally reserved for women. He couldn't be further from the truth; I love it, of course I do - it's beautifully made by his long, elegant fingers, gentle and dexterous - but it hurts my heart too much to accept it. He speaks again with a tremulous edge to his voice, evident upset at the thought of having caused me distress creeping into his tone. "I've seen you wearing them before, I had assumed-"

"No," I mumble, picking stray petals out of my hair simply to give my hands, always twitchy and nervous, something to do as I gaze resolutely over his shoulder, never meeting his eyes. "I... I loved the flowers, it's just... I..." _It's just, that's something that belongs to Courfeyrac and I, and you are not he_. I'm starting to get the feeling that maybe I am not me, either.

"I apologise," he says in a low, earnest voice, "if I overstepped my bounds. I was thinking of nothing other than how you seemed to love the butterflies on the flowers, and how pleased you might be if I could tempt them to land on you, too." Of course. He meant it not romantically - not to crown me as his May king of love and beauty, the way Courfeyrac did every spring - but simply to try to raise my spirits. He looks lost, gazing into the hedgerows as though searching for the answers, the key to my strange behaviour; when he gets none, he bends down to pick the limp, dripping wreath of flowers out of the puddle, a strange, sad expression on his face and he gently lays it over one of the fence posts lining the field we're standing beside. Guilt twisting in my stomach, I feel as though I should say something, anything, to chase that look from his face.

I shake my head, the words simply not there to come out, and instead of pressing it, as I know Courfeyrac would, he simply nods, satisfied that what needed to be said has been, and leaves it be. We continue walking, him murmuring to himself under his breath the Latin names of plants and wildlife we stroll past, occasionally stopping to let a ladybird run over his fingers or to watch a sparrow hop from the side of the road to the safety of under the hedgerows, wings whirring, chirping voice sweet and clear as a child's. The space and quiet to compose myself is gratefully received, and when I offer him a small smile, he smiles back gently and points out a Painted Lady quivering on the stem of a large poppy a few feet ahead.

* * *

 

_21st September 1916_

_Dearest Oliver,_

_Thank you for your letter. I hadn't been expecting to receive one so soon; usually you aren't nearly so prompt, although I suppose France is rather too long a distance to just walk down the road to see me in person. I miss you terribly already. I passed on your greetings and kisses to your mother and sisters, as you asked, and have been told to tell you that they're rather upset about your not having written to them yet. I should write them something quickly, if I were you, to stop them worrying. Because we do worry about you, Oliver. All of us._

_The chaps from the trenches sound an entertaining group. I seem to have made a new friend of my own back here. Do you remember the bespectacled fellow we met when the officers visited the village? He's the new village doctor, or so I understand. His name's Combeferre. Awfully quiet, not one for much conversation, or maybe he's just shy. Perhaps I'm too used to your boisterousness and cheerful nature to understand introverts like myself any more. He's fascinating on walks, though. He knows every flower and butterfly and insect by name, and reels off all this information that I can't possibly have a hope of remembering, but it's wonderful all the same. It reminds me of sitting in the orchard with you in summer whilst you talked about the apple trees and grafting and everything you do to prevent blight and insect attacks._

_I hope you are as well as you sound. Although I rather suspect that you probably wouldn't say, even if you weren't. I'm almost grateful; I'd rather think you were happy than know otherwise, but don't let that censor you in your letters. Ignore my selfishness. I love you for how bright and loving and kind you are, but also for your honesty. Truly, Oliver, you can tell me anything and everything._

_I look forward to your next letter, and hope that this rather short missive of my own at least assuages some of that boredom which always leads you into mischief. I daresay Constable Javert has not yet forgotten the scrumping incidents of years past, particularly from his own garden!_

_As always, all my love._

_Your J._


	3. AUTUMN 1916

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (This continues directly on from the previous chapter.)  
> Possibly a touch filler-y, with my apologies. Again, the letters from Courfeyrac in this chapter and the consequent chapters include quotes from real letters sent by World War One soldiers. If you want to read them for yourselves, I found the majority of them [here](http://www.arthursletters.com/), [here](http://spartacus-educational.com/FWWletters.htm) and [here](http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/debateni/blogs/first-world-war-centenary-letters-from-the-trenches-reveal-horror-faced-by-our-boys-30480316.html)!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very kindly beta'ed by [laurencombeferre](http://archiveofourown.org/users/laurencombeferre), a very skilled writer herself and a generally lovely human being!

As September starts to fade into October, the leaves continue to drift down from the trees and carpet the ground in tones of gold and copper and russet, crunching underfoot like newly laid snow, and the flowers along the wayside begin to wilt and die. I pick as many as I can, taking them home to arrange in vases of water in the hope that I can keep summer, and by extension, Courfeyrac, alive through the winter simply by giving them something to drown in instead of letting them freeze in the cold, hard earth. I haven’t received anything since his first letter, and no matter how much I tell myself that it is because he’s away in France now - away in the trenches, where he’s wanted to be since he was a summer child of fifteen with a face full of freckles and lips stained purple from blueberry juice - I struggle to believe it. Everyone knows by now that when the letters stop, so has his heart, his breathing, his beautiful ringing laughter like a carillon of wedding bells. Combeferre, although he is warm and kind and clever, is no consolation at all.

Sometimes at the school, the children give me presents of carrots and turnips they have dug up from their gardens, or sprigs of winter berries with dark, waxy green leaves that they know will never shrivel and die. I always try to muster a smile for them, but I think they know that my heart isn’t in it, and the guilt I feel when they trudge dejectedly back to their desks for their arithmetic lesson makes me feel even worse. They look exactly as Combeferre did after I tossed his garland into the puddle; miserable, with the hope of having cheered my spirits wiped off their ruddy winter-bitten faces. I apologise quietly, slipping the vegetables into my satchel and settling the bunches of holly in pride of place at the front of my desk. It brings a soft, happy smile to their faces, which at least assuages my guilt a little.

At break times, when I let them all out into the school yard, I watch them playing together and again can’t help thinking of him. Seeing him everywhere, in the boys’ scraped knees and excitable chatter as they run to bring me a toad they’ve found under a rock in the corner of the vegetable garden; in the bounce of the girls’ curly hair as they chatter and skip around the playground, hopscotch and tag and even, although the school forbids it, kissing-chase. I remember playing that game when the two of us were children; I, the designated girl, supposedly because of my feminine lips and long, tumbling russet hair, Courfeyrac the pursuing boy. Being chased through meadows and fields full of crumbled apples, long wild grasses and flowers reaching towards the light, sun kissing our cheeks and butterflies following the sounds of our laughter as I scrambled to evade his clutches yet again. He would always end up catching me, and pressing breathless childish kisses to my nose, my cheek, my chin. He caught my lips once, and we both squealed with disgust and wiped our mouths with the backs of our hands; but even then, we knew. One day, we would do that and mean it; we would play kissing-chase, and I would want to be caught, and he would kiss me on the mouth and I would let him. Both of us would, in fact, want more.

We were children, silly, giggling children with flushed cheeks and piping voices; careless in the world beyond whether Courfeyrac’s mother would have dinner set on the table for when we returned and what she would say about the bright green grass stains on the worn knees of his short trousers. Whenever I think of him, it’s always glorious summer days, the sunlight glinting off his smile and sparkling in his eyes, the dusting of freckles across his nose, the blush of sunburn tinting his cheeks pink as roses. He’d end up nut brown by the end of the season though, from his forehead to his toes, always running around with no shirt and no shoes, so tanned he looked more like a native of the Mediterranean than the southeast of England. I’d be jealous of his golden skin, compared to my own, alabaster pale in winter and boiled-lobster in summer, fair and covered in freckles, the curse of red hair.

Combeferre is waiting by the schoolyard gate when the final bell is rung for the day and the children pour out like salmon in an upstream run. I school my features into a polite smile of greeting, and he offers me one in return, reaching into his medical bag to offer me a small, leather bound book stamped with gold lettering. I flick through it curiously, wondering what it could be about, but I can’t read the script. He smiles softly at me.  
“As I recall, on our walk last week, you said you wanted to read the philosophers. The, ah, the only difficulty is that the only copy I have remains in the original Greek.”

I stare at him in surprise before somehow, a dam inside me bursts and I start to laugh. It feels like years since I have allowed myself humour; the expression on his face, half-smile and half total confusion, only makes me laugh harder. Tears roll down my cheeks and I have to hang off the edge of the wall to support myself, waving away a small infant student’s tremulous concerns of, “Sir, are you well?” as I struggle to breathe. Combeferre throws up his hands in resignation and cracks a rare grin, a true smile of amusement and happiness rather than the small, polite smiles I’m used to seeing on his lips, and winks mischievously at the boy.  
“You know, my lad, I don’t think he is. Perhaps he is unwell. Hysterical, even. He needs a good shock.”

Before I can say, “No!”, the bottle of water from his medical bag is being opened and poured, in one great slosh, over my head. The boy’s eyes are as wide as saucers, and he gasps in surprise as I pant, sopping wet, staring in equal shock at Combeferre as he calmly screws the lid back on and slides the bottle back into his bag. We meet and hold each other’s gaze for a moment before both of us burst out laughing, and I chase him - forgetting all about being the dour schoolmaster, and he about being the respectable country doctor - up the hill, threatening disembowelment or worse when I catch him. He has the advantage of a good half-foot in height over myself, however, and all of it in his legs; the length of his stride allows him to escape me easily, with barely any effort on his part.

Running after him like two boys in the playground feels natural, free, in a way I haven’t since Courfeyrac left. He throws a smile over his shoulder, and out of pure joy, I start to sing:  _In English Country Gardens_. Combeferre laughs and joins in, whistling the tune, the pair of us sprinting down the mud roads and leaping walls and fences, listening to the leaves crackling under our feet.

"How many kinds of sweet flowers grow   
In an English country garden?  
We’ll tell you now of some we know-“

"Those we miss you’ll surely pardon," he interjects, laughing, plucking a holly berry off a neighbouring bough and throwing it in the air and catching it with smooth, sure hands. He almost falls down a rabbit hole as he watches it sail through the air again and again; I throw another at him, and with a wicked grin he simply catches it and starts to juggle them, still whistling.

"Daffodils, heart’s ease and flox-"

"Meadowsweet and lady smocks." He smirks, picking another berry and juggling three, then four, five. I sing a few bars of the circus theme, and he finishes, bowing with a flourish.

"Your voice is lovely," he says, tone admiring, and it brings a low blush to my cheeks. He smiles fondly, picking twigs off the ground and bending those still flexible enough into a ring, threading it with sprigs of oak leaves and large, star-shaped leaves of horse chestnut; the end result is another leafy crown, dotted with smooth brown acorns in their tiny caps. I dodge his attempts to place it over my head, and climb a stile to snatch it out of his hand and lay it over his own smooth-combed locks. It looks out of place on him for a short moment until he removes his glasses, blue eyes shining and bright. In that second, with his dark hair flopping over his brow, with the beaming smile and sparkling eyes, he looks every bit as handsome as Courfeyrac.  
  


* * *

 

_15th October 1916_

_Dear J,_

_Before you and my mother start to worry, I am well._

_We frontline soldiers need more rest. I’ve been getting two hours at most per night, I would guess, and that in a trench considered ‘cushy’ by the older lads in the trenches behind ours. A barrage of coal-scuttles the other night helped get us an extra forty winks, blocking the flares out with all the smoke, but we didn’t manage much more than a doze after they opened on us with shrapnel and machine gun fire. Bahorel took a fragment to the shoulder, superficial really, or so Joly said. Either way, he’s been patched up and other than the occasional tremor seems in good spirits._

_Whilst we’re in here, the water is up to our knees most of the time, and there’s not one of us who ever has a pair of truly dry boots on, not even the captain. The Bosch don’t seem to be doing an awful lot better. Whilst we were in the trenches one of them came over and asked Bahorel for a cigarette and then back again, and he wasn’t fired at. We and the Germans started walking about in the open between the two trenches, repairing them, and there was no firing at all. I think they’re all getting fed up with it. God knows we are._

_We left the trenches last night, crawling across no man’s land on our bellies and trying not to fall into the shell holes or mangle ourselves on the curls of barbed wire scattered around from blown up trenches. We could see them, dark shadows behind the line, and hear them coughing and muttering in that strange language of theirs. Bahorel says it sounds like they’ve got a cold and are trying to cough something up; I have to admit that I’m inclined to agree. All we were doing was cutting the wires, trying to disable as many of their defences as we could before tomorrow morning. Two hours we were out there in the open, and all of us got back alive. War at its best._

_Write back. It’s cold here, and I miss you so. My love to Mother and the girls. Kiss them for me._

_All my love,_

_Oliver._  
  


* * *

 

His letter joins the first under my pillow, wrapped in a neat little pocket of brown paper, smoothed and smoothed again by my eager fingers until the pencil is so smudged it’s barely legible. But it doesn’t matter; every word is imprinted in my head, on my heart, and I recite it to myself when I can’t sleep, imagining him writing it. Those moments rarely go well for me; instead of lulling me to sleep, I end up forcing myself even more awake, terrified by the thought that a shell, a bullet, shrapnel, anything could find him as his hand moves across the paper. He gets so absorbed when he writes letters that I think even a mortar landing in his trench beside him wouldn’t distract him. I have to trust in the others he writes about, Bahorel and Feuilly and Enjolras, to get him out. And Joly to mend him and bring him back home to me.

Sleepless nights segue into rapidly cooling days, and the trees are becoming barer and barer as winter approaches. Every morning I tuck the letters into my coat pockets, and every afternoon Combeferre greets me at the school gate, walking me home. Occasionally we’re accompanied by another young man of his acquaintance, whose head is always covered by a flat cap and his face with a smile. He seems to be losing his hair, from a tuppence-sized spot on the back of his head to a rather larger gap by his right temple. He introduces himself to me as Samuel, or Sam, Bossuet (Bossuet a nickname, as far as I can gather, after a French politician who was a particularly gifted orator), and shakes my hand.

"Jehan." I return, and he squeezes my hand with a friendly smile before turning to Combeferre.

"Combeferre, my dear fellow, how do you feel about a good game of football this afternoon? Your skills are unrivalled, although I feel lucky." This, I gather, is a joke; Bossuet, Combeferre informs me, is infamous for his terrible luck. Combeferre makes a show of deliberating before gently turning him down with a shake of his head.

"No matter, no matter," Bossuet says airily, waving a hand in the air and almost hitting Combeferre in the face with the end of his cane as he does so, "I’ll have to challenge you another time."

"So you will," Combeferre says with a sideways grin to me, and Bossuet chuckles.

The postman, bag stuffed full of letters, passes us as we stroll leisurely towards the farmstead marking the end of the village and the beginning of the openness of the Yorkshire Dales, and Bossuet calls him back for a minute to inquire after his own address. The young man performing today’s deliveries passes him a parcel wrapped in brown paper and a letter with a postmark from France; Bossuet thanks him profusely and promptly opens both, offering us a biscuit each from the tin in the parcel - baked by a sister in Southampton - and scanning his letter. He lets out a sound of relief which catches both mine and Combeferre’s attention.

"Good news?"

"The very best," he says happily, chewing on his own biscuit, crumbs sticking to his chapped lips and dusting the front of his somewhat worn jacket. "Joly - Iwan, I keep forgetting I needn’t call him by his rank and surname too - is well, other than his asthma and what he fears to be a case of mild gangrene in one toe-" Here Combeferre gives him a worried look, although I am preoccupied with the name. Joly sounds familiar, and I’m trying to place it when Bossuet laughs and continues. "No, no! He’ll be fine, he worries about his health, but it’s very rarely anything to get anxious over. He tends a little towards overexaggeration. Anyway, he’s well, and he likes the fellows he’s working with, although apparently one of the other troops is something of a force to be reckoned with. A chap named Malcolm - sorry, Bakorel, as I understand it. Iwan’s handwriting is atrocious, though - a true doctor - so it’s highly unlikely that I’ve read that correctly."

"Bahorel," I say, my eyes lighting up. "And Iwan, of course! Joly!"

Bossuet fixes me with a confused expression. “Have you met?”

"No, no," I laugh, inexplicable happiness bubbling through me. "But - Joly, in his letters, does he mention an Oliver Courfeyrac?"

Bossuet scans the letter again and nods. “He does. A Private de Courfeyrac, anyway. Something of a handful, apparently. Definitely rather extravagant, and Joly struggles with being social at the best of times, so he seems to rather actively avoid him. I take it you know Courfeyrac, then, and perhaps Iwan through him?”

"Yes," I whisper, feeling completely aglow. "Yes, Courfeyrac is my… My best friend. He told me all about Joly and the others in the first letter he sent back to me." I pull it out of my pocket to show him, tracing my fingers over the familiar, spidery handwriting. Bossuet leans over my shoulder to read, and laughs aloud at Courfeyrac’s obviously fond words about him. "’ _Perhaps it’s the Welsh accent, though, making him sound that way_ ’! Your friend has a good sense of humour.”

I nod proudly, a soft smile on my lips. He does. Courfeyrac has always been able to make anybody and everybody feel better by cracking a joke, even at his own expense. A natural comedian and clown. I can’t help thinking how well he would obviously have got on with Bossuet, who is more clumsy than comedic but always has the same bright, exuberant manner and twinkling eyes.

Combeferre has moved on ahead, a strange slope to his shoulders that I’m not sure that I want to identify. He plays idly with the edges of his cuffs, fidgets with his tie, pulls what remaining leaves there are on the hedgerows off; behaviour wholly unlike himself, and I bite my lip, feeling guilt settle in my stomach like a stone. Of course, he must have others he cares for away in service, and here Bossuet and I are practically dancing over our letters like excited schoolchildren when he has evidently heard nothing. I voice my concerns to Bossuet, who immediately looks chastened and tucks Joly’s letter away in the pocket of his coat, catching up to Combeferre beside the orchard.

"I apologise, my friend, if I seemed insensitive talking so about my letters. You obviously have absent friends or relatives of your own whom you wait for news of. I’m sure you will hear from them soon," he said gently, his expression earnest and words heartfelt, and Combeferre’s face softens.

His eyes, however, flick towards mine, with an unreadable expression clouding their blue depths.  
  


* * *

 

_20th October 1916_

_My darling Oliver,_

_Again, I have passed on the greetings and kisses to your family. When are you going to write to them yourself? I’ve been showing the ones you send me in the meantime, but I think they would prefer to receive their own. Even if you don’t tell them everything, Oliver, you should write to them. They miss you so._

_As do I. All I think about, every day, is you and when you will be coming home. The trees are all dropping their leaves and the flowers are already disappearing from the beckside, and I feel the same. Every day that passes takes another little piece of my summer, of you, away from me, or so it feels. I love you so, Oliver. Promise me you will come back. That is all I need to hear from you, now and always. That nothing you or I or the bloody Germans can do will take you away from me._

_Except perhaps to give them a cigarette. I know how generous you are._

_I’ve made another acquaintance, Bossuet. Perhaps Joly has told you about him? Bossuet has heard all about you in Joly’s letters, and from what I gather, most of it is how you’re always getting into scrapes. By the sounds of it, you’re lucky you’ve not been hurt. Thank goodness you don’t share Bossuet’s luck as well as one of his acquaintances. He’s the kindest, most cheerful chap, Oliver. I’m sure you’ll adore him when you get to meet him. Not that you’ve ever actively disliked anyone in your life. I don’t think you have it in you._

_Write to me. I miss you._

_All my love and more,_

_Your J._


	4. WINTER 1916

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A letter from Joly brings our home trio's illusions about the war crashing down around their ears.
> 
> N.B.: the letters from Courfeyrac in this chapter and the consequent chapters include quotes from real letters sent by World War One soldiers. If you want to read them for yourselves, I found the majority of them [here](http://www.arthursletters.com/), [here](http://spartacus-educational.com/FWWletters.htm) and [here](http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/debateni/blogs/first-world-war-centenary-letters-from-the-trenches-reveal-horror-faced-by-our-boys-30480316.html)!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, very kindly beta'ed by the lovely [laurencombeferre](http://archiveofourown.org/users/laurencombeferre), with so much gratitude! Any mistakes remaining are wholly my own.

**WINTER 1916**

_Tuesday, 11th November 1916_

_Samuel,_

_The windowpanes are frozen over, and glass is cool and damp to the touch when I jolt awake in the mornings, which may explain the chill in my bones. As I tend to sleep in the field hospital, the better to aid my patients, I get the luxury of curtains to shut out the flashes of explosions. If only ears came with shutters also, to stop me from hearing the sounds of this war: hundreds of men dying overnight, far away from where medical help and or just the comfort of a drug-eased passing could reach them. Even with the curtains drawn, dawn seems to come in one great, unholy flash of light like an explosion and it never fails to shock me, gasping and soaked to the bone with sweat, out of my sleep. I fear my case of tinnitus will become chronic, or perhaps I shall even go deaf; every word I hear rings with the sounds of bomb blasts, the crackle of shrapnel and rattling machine guns. Samuel, I have come to hell on Earth._

_Occasionally my chums from the trenches visit, usually pallid and trembling from injury. Last month alone I treated Private Feuilly twice, once for a gunshot through the bicep gone foetid as he crawled through the mud back to the trench - he was lucky not to lose the arm - and again for a gash to his thigh sustained from dragging himself over barbed wire during a push over the top, so deep it needed stitches. Bahorel has been in and out of here since we arrived, and every time I see him, he grows more drawn. He shakes like a leaf all the time, and there's a frantic look in his eyes like a rabbit caught in a snare that I don't have the first clue how to treat._

_Am I failing at my duties?_

_I miss nothing more than the valleys at home, green and quiet and unmarred by any noise louder than the bleating of sheep or the occasional motor horn. Life in Wales was so peaceful. But being wistful does me no good, and nor does it do the poor beggars out in the trenches any good either. Every minute, they bring in more wounded, and I haven't the supplies even to ease their sleeping. I wake to them screaming, seeing enemies my eyes are blind to, and they sob like children into their pillows and blankets. I have to write their letters for them, letters to girls back home; Samuel, I have to write home for them as if they aren't dying, as if they'll see the sun set or rise. If it's so awful out there, I can only feel blessed to remain in here, where all I have to cope with is the echoes and shadows the enemy throws against the walls._

_Forgive me. I don't mean to panic you. Private de Courfeyrac comes in every day he can manage with a new bunch of marigolds - he says they grow near the trenches he finds himself in currently, and that his friend Jehan back home says they are for love and friendship, and I appreciate the sentiment. He is so very kind. But I feel like an overfilled sandbag, as though the stitching at my seams is fraying, and what is only a trickle now will be a flood later. I don't wish to stay long enough to find out what the wound will be that makes them split for good._

_Your friend,_

_Dr. Iwan Joly_  
  


* * *

It's a cold, crisp November Saturday morning when the first knock, sharp and clean as a kettle-drum rattle, lands on my door. I open the curtains to see Combeferre's umbrella propped neatly against the steps to the porch, and Bossuet, uncharacteristically huddled and slope-shouldered, leaning beside it, as though there's no strength in his legs at all to stand. I pull the nearest sweatshirt I can find on over my pyjamas and skid downstairs on my heels to let them in; something has set my heart racing seeing the ever-cheerful Bossuet look so miserable. It can only be bad news from the front, and my first, horribly selfish, thought is _Courfeyrac_.

Combeferre helps him inside when I open the door, carefully settling him in my mother's old armchair before asking hesitantly whether he might make tea for the three of us. When I offer to do it myself, he shakes his head awkwardly, and I understand. He has reached the boundaries of his capabilities dealing with Bossuet already, and needs the distraction of a set task to calm the tremor in his hands, the rapid catch-and-release of his breathing. Indeed, the poor fellow looks about to have some kind of breakdown, so I swallow my instinctive insistences that I will prepare the drinks myself and turn my attention to our friend, hunched by the unlit fire with the expression of a haunted survivor.

"Sam?" I ask softly, laying my hand on his shoulder. Moments pass before finally he startles at the sound of my voice calling him again; I don't think he even felt my fingers gently squeeze his arm, so numb from cold and what is evidently shock. My heart takes a leap into my throat as his eyes, soft and brown and liquid as a spaniel's, glaze with tears; _Courfeyrac Courfeyrac Courfeyrac_ plays on a frantic loop in my head, but what comes out of my mouth is, "Joly?"

He holds out a piece of paper, scrunched and tear-blotted, with a shaking hand, swallowing thickly. An answering shiver rattles my own fingers as I reach out to take it, running my eyes over the surface to make sure it's what I think it is. There's no telltale yellow paper, no thick black edges; not a telegram or a death, then. The relief I feel is indescribable until the dam inside him breaks and he falls apart like a river bursting its banks; there seems to be only fragments of a human being sat on my mother's chair, rather than a whole person, jagged edges too raw to be touched.

All I can do is open the letter and read, and try not to join him.

It hits me all at once just how much Courfeyrac has hidden from me in his own missives. He complains of small aggravations like lack of sleep, and the constant noise; he does not, unlike Joly, describe how the war feels to those trapped in its gaping maw. The thought of Oliver in such conditions, fighting for his life only to lose what threads of sanity remain - as clearly threatens Joly in this letter - is unbearable. How easy we have it back here, only waiting for their letters and hoping to see them again when the Germans have had enough of trying to blow them to kingdom come. The roil of my stomach threatens to make me sick, and I choke it back as fiercely as I can manage. Bossuet grasps at my hand, desperation in his eyes; he needs someone who can stay strong enough for the both of us now, not someone who will only draw him into more misery. Combeferre presses a mug of tea into each of our free hands, and we take mindless sips, not caring that our lips and tongues are scalded by the hot liquid.

Combeferre sits on Bossuet's other side, right on the hearth. His expression is wary, fearful of Bossuet's tears and my own silence. Indecision rolls off him in waves; he is unused to not having all the answers, to being unable to cure what is hurting the pair of us. Bossuet is in agony, grieving as though Joly is already dead; I am quiet, numbed to everything except trying to remain as still as possible, a statue of a young man comforting a friend in need. I cannot move; if I do, I fear I shall fly apart like a shattered glass, all the most bitter and painful parts of me lodging in whoever is closest.

"I just don't know what..." Bossuet murmurs, his tears stopped, voice flat and dull. The change of tone is even more alarming than his hysteria. "How can I even begin to respond to that? I don't have any of the answers, no more than he does. And he's in such pain..." He swallows hard, the dry gulp sounding as loud as a gunshot in the unnaturally silent air of the cottage. "He is in such pain, Jehan. What do I tell him?"

Both of us have practically forgotten Combeferre is here. He's a shape, a shadow on the edges of our little box, the globe of fear and pain we have shut ourselves inside. I gaze at him over Bossuet's shoulder, and he shakes his head helplessly. Neither of us can answer our friend's question; we are as lost as he.

"I think..." I begin hesitantly, squeezing his cold fingers, tracing the rough knuckles with the pad of my thumb. It feels so good to hold somebody's hand. I haven't had the opportunity since Courfeyrac left, and there's a grieving part of me who takes the consolation of Bossuet's callused hand in mine as a replacement for Courfeyrac, and I can almost feel him doing the same, as though we are reaching through the trenches to comfort and soothe our distant friends. "I think perhaps the best thing you can do is try to raise his spirits. Don't deny the existence of his problems, but... try to take his mind off them. Distraction is sometimes the best therapy."

Combeferre nods, grateful for my having left him an opening. "I understand how painful this is for you, Bossuet -" He catches my eye and hastily corrects himself, "-for both of you. But given how little there is that either of you will be able to do for them from here, perhaps it would be best to do as Jehan says. You have a talent for making people laugh, my friend, for raising their spirits and soothing their woes, just as Jehan does. You're a natural balm for the wound Joly is suffering." He strokes Bossuet's patchy hair, tangling a thin lock around his fingers, and Bossuet's gaze slowly slides over to meet his. "Just write to him as you usually would, more, if you like, if you feel it might help him, and try to calm him that way. I would imagine that what most of them at the front are missing most is familiar voices, whether of family or friends or lovers or just of people they know and associate with their homes here. I daresay it's that loneliness and homesickness doing most of the damage."

He says it so much better than I ever could, and I finish my tea with one great gulp so that I can reach out and take his hand with the one now free. Bossuet nods, a little colour coming back into his wan cheeks, and I can breathe easier. It is easier, or should I say, less painful to think of Courfeyrac, of Joly and Feuilly and Bahorel and the others (whom I consider, through Oliver's letters, to be my friends) as simply homesick than to imagine the onslaught of physical and mental exhaustion they survive day after day in France. Combeferre breathes a quiet sigh of relief. We are by no means free, but we have taken a step in the right direction.  
  


* * *

  
Courfeyrac's next letter, a full week later, brings every doubt Joly's letter to Bossuet left me with screaming to the surface.

_18th November 1916_

_Dear J,_

_It has been very wet here the past two or three days. In fact, it poured all of yesterday and has started again today, so I must apologise if my writing is somewhat less than legible. Life in these forest trenches is beastly, for the most part. Our uniforms and boots are always sodden, and with the snow we've been starting to get, it's no wonder we've all got coughs and colds enough to bring shells raining down on our heads every few minutes. Feuilly sneezes loud enough to drown them out! The other day, he sneezed so loud the Captain thought a shell had landed nearby - the whistling through his nose just before the great **AH-CHOO!** sounded like one of the German whizz-bangs they're so fond of using on the more densely-populated lines behind us._

_I've been doing my best to visit Joly in the field hospital as often as I can. He seems unwell, even for him, and I think he suffers rather badly from his line of work. I have to say, I'd much rather be out here where I don't have to deal with all the poor buggers who only get partially shot and blown to bits - I've seen the poor blighters on his wards, and patching up some of those wounds would be more than enough to turn my stomach._

_I worry about Bahorel also. The noise and the constant banging and flashing seems to be affecting his nerves worse than most; every time a bomb goes off, he goes silent for a moment, and nothing seems to bring him back but his own body shuddering him out of it. It's common to a certain degree, but it's never a good sign. You hear things about some soldiers doing awful things with their rifles just to escape - I dread to think that someday the sound of a gun firing won't be the Germans at him, but Bahorel himself. I've talked to Joly about it, but he was preoccupied. I can't say I blame him; he's the busiest of all of us._

_Don't worry about me. I know you are. I'm tired, of course, and I can't wait for this blasted war to be over, but it's almost Christmas after all, and perhaps I'll be able to get leave. I live in hope!_

_I shall see you soon. I'm coming back to you, I promise._

_All my love,_

_Oliver._

The tone, so deceptively light and frivolous, has to be hiding something. Perhaps I'm just projecting Joly's horrors onto Courfeyrac, but I can't help thinking that if his companions suffer so, that he must be in agonies himself. I remember chastising him before, telling him that he mustn't hide things from me and that he mustn't try to put on his ridiculous brave face, but he clearly hasn't listened. And the only reason I can think of is that Bossuet, in paroxysms of terror, must have written back to Joly, and Courfeyrac has heard about my fears through him. Anger blazes through me like wildfire before being instantaneously quelled, Combeferre's calm, soft voice speaking to me in my head.

"Bossuet was afraid, and your reactions being similar to his likely soothed him. It was hardly an irrational response to a letter like that." In my mind's eye, I bring up the memory of Bossuet's face; the mindless panic in his eyes like a spooked horse, the deathly pale cheeks, and the shaking of his hands. Combeferre, even, had looked scared by Bossuet's utter shutdown of mental state; so terrified that all he could think of, all he could react to, was his own fear. I remember the feeling well, like lead in my veins, weighting me into one position on the rug in front of the armchair, trying to remember how to breathe so that I didn't suffocate myself. How do you forget something so important? How do you get so scared, you forget how to breathe?

I tuck the letter into the pouch with all of the others, gently smoothing the rain-smudged paper with my fingertips. I've started biting my nails again out of pure nerves, and the skin around the edges of my nails is reddened and shiny from constant gnawing. My mother would despair, if she were here to see it; it was a habit she forced out of me as a boy, with applications of wild garlic to the ends of my fingers. If the smell hadn't put me off, the taste undoubtedly would have; I still can't stand garlic, and Courfeyrac always teased me about how I must be a descendant of Carmilla or Count Dracula himself, with my ivory skin and aversion to pungent foodstuffs. The only thing that convinced him otherwise was the fact that I've always worn a small silver cross around my neck, for protection.  
  


* * *

_  
19th November 1916_

_My darling Oliver,_

_I assume from the lack of wishes for your mother and sisters this last letter that you've started to write to them as well. I have to admit, the thought gives me a selfish sort of pleasure; your letters here are mine and mine alone now, to be treasured and kept underneath my pillow as they always are. I love you so, Oliver. I truly do. The thought of seeing you at Christmas is almost too much to bear; if that were to happen, I should ask for no other gifts at all, other than to have you brought back to me, even for a short while._

_I hope Bahorel and Joly will be alright. I do. But you should be worrying about yourself, not them. They have others here, back home, to worry for them, to think constantly -as I do, for you - about whether they will come home, and whether, if they do, they will be the same men as the ones who left. It's selfish of me to ask, I know, and perhaps cruel - but please, focus on yourself. Don't get shot, Oliver. Don't get shot or blown up or gassed; don't come back to England in any other shape than perfectly hale and hearty, the way you were when you left. I shall love you always, no matter how you look or talk or sound, but the thought of you being harmed is unbearable._

_I can't help worrying, you know that, but I know that you will take care of yourself. For your mother, for your sisters, and for me. I hope to see you at Christmas, my love._

_Come back to me._

_All my love,_

_Your J._


	5. CHRISTMAS 1916

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This part is very short, I apologise - but hopefully enough happens that you won’t mind too much! And I’ll probably post the next bit very soon as well, since it’s ready and much longer.
> 
> N.B.: the letters from Courfeyrac in this chapter and the consequent chapters include quotes from real letters sent by World War One soldiers. If you want to read them for yourselves, I found the majority of them [here](http://www.arthursletters.com/), [here](http://spartacus-educational.com/FWWletters.htm) and [here](http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/debateni/blogs/first-world-war-centenary-letters-from-the-trenches-reveal-horror-faced-by-our-boys-30480316.html)!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, very kindly beta’ed by the lovely [laurencombeferre](http://archiveofourown.org/users/laurencombeferre), with so much gratitude! Any mistakes remaining are wholly my own.

**CHRISTMAS 1916**

_12th December 1916_

_To the leader of the Company,_

_I, the signer below, have a request to make of you. I don't doubt you and your fellow officers must receive hundreds of these sorts of letters over the year, but I hope you will excuse that long enough to read the letter you hold in your hand. Although my brother has only been in the field for four months, I would like to ask you to grant him a leave of absence, namely, to allow him home to see our mother for Christmas._

_Sir, she is ill, and without Oliver, I fear she will not see through the Yuletide season. He is our main and sometimes only source of joy and comfort in the house since my father died years past, and we all wish desperately to have him home with us, for our mother's sake if not for his. If you could find it in yourself to grant us this small mercy, ourselves and Oliver would be eternally in your debt._

_Yours, with all reverence,_

_Margaret de Courfeyrac._   
  


* * *

  
Oliver does not come home for Christmas.

Receiving the colonel's reply, that a leave of absence during such a critical period of the war effort would be impossible, seems to break what little hope his mother still has of seeing her son before the war ends. She is like a widow all over again when I see her clutching Molly's arm as they do their grocery shopping, their red-rimmed eyes and trembling fingers marking them out as families already beginning the grieving process. I offer what little comfort I can, visiting the house to sit by Mrs de Courfeyrac on the hearth rug and read her his letters, trying to inject my voice with all the joy and vivacity of his own. He tells them even less than he does me; eventually, I have to stop coming round, because every word I speak aloud to them feels like a lie.

Instead, I spend Christmas Eve decorating every inch of the house I can reach, with Combeferre for company. He helps me bring a small, rather thin tree from the Christmas market in the village square all the way up the hill to my cottage, where he proudly stands it in the corner of the room, humming carols to himself as he tries to steady its position with ballast of gifts and the coal scuttle from the fireplace. I sing along under my breath, hanging red and green ribbons from every available picture hook to try and make the walls look more festive. The whole house smells of fresh pine from the needles scattered over the floor, crushed beneath the heels of our boots as we track snow across the flagstones. Removing my boots to try and lessen the potential for further damage, I ask Combeferre to do the same before helping him wind prickly branches of fir and holly into a wreath for the front door.

He uses the leftovers to create another crown, this time of trailing ivy vines and brilliant red holly and hawthorn berries, which he places over my brow with a flourish befitting a court jester. I remember sitting in school in winter, singing carols with the choir as the music master played the piano. _The holly and the ivy, when they are both full grown, of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly bears the crown_. I don't realise I am singing, sweet and clear, until Combeferre's hand falls from my hair to take my hand and draw me into a dance.

"Oh, the rising of the sun-"

"The running of the deer," he joins in softly, his own voice clear as a bell, deep and pleasant. I can't help noticing as we sing that our voices complement each other's beautifully; I find harmonies easily, my pitch soaring and flying over his steady, delicate notes, his hand cupping mine gently as he leads me in an effortless waltz around the room. Courfeyrac and his two left feet spring to my mind, and I laugh softly, enjoying having a skilled partner for a change.

"The playing of the merry organ, sweet singing in the choir." He is light on his feet for a man so tall, and I am so happy - bursting with it, happy enough to let the wreath of vines and berries lie on my head, happy enough to let my own voice, thin though I think it is, be the music - that I allow him to whirl me around the sitting room until his hip bumps into the back of my mother's old armchair and he lets me go.

Combeferre makes tea and our boots sit by the fire, drying, as I read over Courfeyrac's last letter, trying not to feel guilty about the warmth and good company I am enjoying whilst he is in the field, in constant danger of losing his life. I barely get chance to begin winding myself back up into a panic before Combeferre is pressing a mug of tea into my hand with a gentle, "Don't worry about him. He's going to be fine," and for once - for what is possibly the first time - I believe him.

The tree looks bare without anything wound around its spindly branches, so Combeferre takes an orange from the kitchen and cuts it into thin slices, skewering a hole in each near the ring of the zest to thread ribbon through. I sit by his side and help to stud the slices of orange with cloves from the jar at the top of my baking cupboard, and within half an hour we have seventeen fragrant tree decorations, threaded neatly with gold and silver ribbon from Combeferre's pockets and hung on every branch of the tree we thought would support them. The sitting room smells heavenly from the mixed scents of orange, cloves and pine, and Combeferre inhales deeply.

"This is what Christmas smells like at home, for me." His gaze is soft, nostalgic, as he smiles at me, hand reaching out to take mine as we admire the tree. His hands are unusually warm, perhaps from being in front of a blazing fire for the past few hours whilst we made the house look festive. As his grip encompasses mine, I allow myself to close my eyes, imagining the smooth, strong hand is Courfeyrac's broad, callused one; the smile I feel like the touch of sunlight against my cheek is Oliver's brilliant grin, and the surge of affection I feel is for Courfeyrac, not Combeferre. I open my eyes again, meeting the bright blue gaze, and feel a pang of loss; for a moment - brief and bittersweet - I had hoped to see Courfeyrac's boisterous brown eyes there instead of the calm sea-blue irises of my new friend. The tree still seems pathetically bare, though, so I hit upon the idea of making chain decorations from the stack of newspapers beside the fire, and we readily settle by the hearth to cut them into strips and loop them together, fastening the circles of print with parcel tape from leftover presents.

It's quiet, companionable work, but every so often, I feel Combeferre's eyes on my face, catching glimpses of blue tracing the line of my nose, the curve of my lip. A lock of hair falls in front of my face, and I push it back behind my ear as his gaze follows the movement of my hand. A dimple appears in his cheek as he smiles slightly, his clever fingers never once straying from the paper in his hands, but I can feel anticipation rolling off him, charging the air between us with more heat than could possibly be coming from the fire behind us. Looking up, against the firelight, his own profile is stunning; arresting, even, with its long, straight nose and plush, bowed mouth. I make the mistake of meeting his eyes, and he leans in slowly, giving me every chance to pull away.

I don't. I can't move. His lips are soft and tender against mine, one hand covering mine on the hearth and the other, light as a butterfly's wing, on my waist; he doesn't draw me in, but instead stays where he is, just slowly moving his mouth against mine, catching my bottom lip between his own and breathing puffs of air against the tingling skin. I feel light, as though a cushionof air has caught me after a fall; I float in this sweet, tentative feeling, soft and slow, a warmth of familiarity spreading through me. It is beautiful, for as long as it lasts until it begins to take on the sting and burn of fire. _Courfeyrac_. I am being kissed, on my own hearth, by a man I have come to love deeply as a friend, and whose advances I am not rejecting - but I am thinking of _Courfeyrac_ , and that gives me the strength to push him away.

Combeferre's face flares scarlet in the firelight, and he swallows thickly, brushing his fingers over his dry lips. I cannot muster the hard, accusative stare I know I should be giving him - kissing me like that, unprompted and unsolicited - but a deep-seated, quiet part of me whispers for the return of his mouth to my skin, feeding that gentle warmth and airy lightness I felt, just for a moment, fill my ribcage like a diver's first breath of air after breaking the surface.  
  


* * *

_  
December 25th 1916_

_Dearest J,_

_Another night has passed and another morning come, and I am still here in the trenches and in good health. I hope this letter finds you equally well. This letter is all for you, I promise; your Christmas gift, since I can't send much else. I can't tell you how disappointed I am not to be at home with you. I hear from the corporal that Mother and Molly had written, begging for his leave to send me home, but were denied. You've not to be angry with him, any of you. The poor chap seemed absolutely miserable when he had to tell me, so my own anger passed soon enough. We're all needed on the front nowadays, so they really can't spare us._

_There are some things so beautiful about life here in France, though, perhaps because we worry that we won't be coming home. I saw the most exceptional moon rise over the fields during my watch last night; clouds hid it for a moment, great thick dark ones like thunderclouds in summer, before it burst through as though someone had punched a hole in a piece of blackout paper. Feuilly said (you'll forgive me for not transcribing his accent, though it made the sentiment all the more beautiful for the lyrical way it was expressed) that our lives here will be like that; dark, but it will pass, and the light will be all the brighter for it afterwards. So we find our own ways to find hope._

_You mustn't worry about me, dear heart, because I'm just as able to look after myself as the other fellows, and more so than some. I've been looking after Bahorel also, and bringing Joly flowers to cheer his ward up with as many colours as I can find. Bahorel likes to help pick them; putting Joly's bouquets together is the only time his hands stop shaking. I shall have to try and press some of them, perhaps in Feuilly's pocket Bible, to send to you. With the winter, I can't imagine there are many flowers back at home, but there are a few stragglers here, the hardy sorts that can survive in conditions like these. The Enjolrases and Feuillys and Courfeyracs of the floral world, one might say._

_I remain, as always, your devoted_

_Oliver_


	6. CHRISTMAS 1916

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _My darling Oliver,_
> 
>  
> 
> _I am writing this late at night, after a long think by myself, and I am afraid it is going to hurt you, but I'm sure it won't harm you permanently..._
> 
>  
> 
> Rating has been bumped up! This chapter continues pretty much immediately after the last.
> 
> N.B.: the letters from Courfeyrac in this chapter and the consequent chapters include quotes from real letters sent by World War One soldiers. If you want to read them for yourselves, I found the majority of them [here](http://www.arthursletters.com/), [here](http://spartacus-educational.com/FWWletters.htm) and [here](http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/debateni/blogs/first-world-war-centenary-letters-from-the-trenches-reveal-horror-faced-by-our-boys-30480316.html)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, very kindly beta’ed by the lovely [laurencombeferre](http://archiveofourown.org/users/laurencombeferre), with so much gratitude! Any mistakes remaining are wholly my own.

_January 23rd, 1917_

_My darling Oliver,_

My hand pauses and I press the heel of my palm to my forehead, trying to rub away the constant heavy weight that has settled behind my eyebrows since Christmas Eve. I don't know what to write anymore.

_My darling Oliver,_

A wet chunk of something painful chokes me as I angrily wipe at my eyes, furious with myself. Am I lying to him? Can I call him 'my darling' - as I always have done - after being kissed by Combeferre, allowing - and worse, _enjoying_ \- it? Courfeyrac is always in my thoughts, always. Every minute I breathe, I feel a new pang in my chest, the fear that he will die at war, buried in some foreign field amongst all the others who drop like flies around him - every breath there is new agony, and I grow more afraid. And constant fear becomes numbing after a while. You forget that you are alive, that there are so many new and beautiful things around you; instead you're imprisoned with your pain and your terror until relief comes by opening the prison door. I have always thought that it would be Courfeyrac who would free me, Courfeyrac who would open the bars of my cage and let me soar out to be free, to love him and cherish every moment left to us by the will of God. But instead, it has been Combeferre; Combeferre, with his soft words and nervous touch, with his moths and his bees and his floral crowns. Combeferre, with his elegant feet and gentle, sweet lips against my own.

I hate him. I hate him for ripping the comfortable blanket of whatever I had with Courfeyrac from around my shoulders; whether it was love, childish infatuation, I don't know, but he has torn it away from me, forcing me to stand in cold winter snows and trust that he is the fire to keep me warm. He's pushed me from the top of a cliff and asks me just to believe that he will catch me, that I won't shatter on the rocks below because his arms will be there to break my fall. I feel truly naked for the first time since I was a child, and it is a humiliation.

My eyes stray to the crown he made me, wound ivy with branches of hawthorn and studs of holly berries, resting on the mantelpiece. I storm to my feet and grab it, flinging it with all the force I can manage into the flames, as though it is Combeferre himself. I watch it burn furiously, fists clenched, until the pitiful curling of the leaves as the flames lick at their glossy green edges makes a new kind of guilt settle in my stomach and - careless of the flames - I reach into the fire and pluck it out, blowing desperately on the branches to quell the flames. My hand, blistered and red, stings fiercely, and the clenching of my fingers around the crown is enough to bring tears to my eyes. But I have saved it, and at the same time, damned myself.

_My darling Oliver,_

_I am writing this late at night, after a long think by myself, and I am afraid it is going to hurt you, but I'm sure it won't harm you permanently._

_My darling Oliver, I love you so very much, and I always will. You have never been anything but the dearest, most special person to my heart, my confidant, my beloved. I think of you all the time. But now, after a couple of months away from you, it's me who has changed; I am different, I'm not the boy you left crying on the platform in August. I fear that loneliness has changed me, for the worse. I grow desperate for somebody's touch to lie gentle on my skin, to feel lips on mine and breath whispering the sweet things we used to say to each other into my ear; but_

_Oliver, I have -_

I cannot finish the sentence. How do I find the words to tell him that his sweetheart is another's? How can I tell him, in words that will not cause him pain, that I have found comfort with somebody else, comfort that lightens the load of missing him driving me into the ground with every step? I am quite sure I don't love Combeferre - not yet. But I can see the direction in which we are going, he and I, and every step towards him takes me further from Oliver, and the other way around. How do I choose? How can I say to one, _I love you, but not enough?_ How do I split myself in two?

I think back to the kiss on Christmas Eve, to Combeferre holding my hand as he kissed me, slow and warm beside the hearth. He was so sweet, so tender, so ridiculously and brilliantly Combeferre; irresistible even as I wished I could push him away, for Courfeyrac's sake if not my own. But I am changed since meeting him. The only regret I feel in the memory is pushing him away, forcing him to break the contact of our mouths, our hands, and that tiny but tangible anchor between us, the thinnest golden thread linking him to me. I am lost, nowadays, without him.

_Oliver, I am not alone any more. Please don't for a second think that I blame you. Not at all. I wish that you hadn't gone away, but only to spare you from what you are going through at the Front. I know you put on such a brave face for the rest of us, but darling, we know it's a lie. And we promised to be truthful with one another, now and always. Which is why I am writing you this letter._

_I am so sorry for this, Oliver. I never meant for it to happen; I never meant for us to be parted, even for a moment. But circumstances - and people, much to my regret - change, and there's very little we can do about it. It is not his fault either. I have felt so lonely, and the only lights are your letters. But his voice became brighter and brighter, and soon it seemed as though there were two suns in the sky and I couldn't possibly say which one kept me warm during the winter._

_Your life will be as Feuilly said, Oliver. There will be clouds, but you will burn through them as though they were never there; you are radiant, beautiful, a light in the sky to lead people home. I have never doubted that. And I have loved you for so long, Oliver. I hope you can forgive me._

_Yours,_

_J._

Tears come thick and fast by the time I sign the last shaking letter, my initial, at the bottom of the paper. I have, with one sheet of paper, written away nineteen years of childhood, of innocence. Instant regret floods through me, and I desperately scrunch up the paper, about to throw it into the fire, when I feel a hand, gentle and comforting and familiar, on my shoulder. I'm shaking when I turn around and see him, blue eyes soft with concern behind his glasses, and I crumple into his arms like the paper I still hold in my fist. He gently prises the letter out of my grasp and holds me close, rocking slowly, his arms tight around my body.

He sits me down in my mother's armchair and I curl into its comforting warmth, painfully reminded of Bossuet after Joly's letter; I feel similarly helpless now, as though cast into the sea with no lifeline and no lighthouse to warn me of the rocks I am being dragged over. Combeferre returns a moment later with a towel soaked in cold water, which he wraps around my burned hand; the cold leeches some of the burning out, but I miss it; I miss the grounding sensation of absolute physical agony to cancel out the white noise in my head. After several minutes of silence, he pulls me up and into another hug.

"Do you need to talk about it?" he asks gently.

"I loved him," I choke against his waistcoat, and he simply nods, running a hand through my hair and laying his cheek against the crown of my head. _What_ , I wonder, _have I ever done to deserve men like Courfeyrac and Combeferre to ever fall in love with me?_ But his hands on my back, his breath gently ruffling my curls, let me know that he understands, that I am absolved. He tilts my chin up and presses another one of his kisses to my mouth; so kind and chaste, you would hardly know they were there. Courfeyrac had always been more fierce, demanding that I be kissed and kiss him in kind, our fingers tangling together as his tongue brushed mine and frissons of excitement shivered down our spines. So unlike one another; fire and water, earth and air. Courfeyrac's kisses set me ablaze, made me fly; Combeferre's ground me, let me float instead of drowning.

"I know," he says quietly.

"I still do," I sob into his chest, and he nods again. "I know."

I open my eyes, look up at him, and feel the chasm opening under my feet. I have this moment to decide, this moment to accept him or let him go, and I am too afraid of the fall to let the one lifeline I have go. Our eyes stay locked for what feels like hours before I regain control of my tongue.

"I want to be yours," I say, so softly I think he can't have heard me, but his knuckle wipes underneath my lashes delicately and his mouth finds mine again, and he simply repeats himself.

"I know."

We don't part for a moment as he slowly leads me out of the sitting room, his hands careful around my own, still pressing his light kisses to my lips, my chin, my cheeks. When we reach my bedroom, he unbuttons my shirt slowly, his mouth tracing the line of freckles down my neck that Courfeyrac used to love, used to stroke with his fingers when we lay side-by-side in the meadow. His hands, though, are soft, warm and gentle on my skin where Courfeyrac's would be rough, calluses scratching skin that feels both numb and on fire. I open my eyes, breathing shakily, and he gazes back at me as he moves my hands, fluttering nervously over his shoulders, to the buttons of his own shirt, helping me to push them through the eyelets one by one.

When I'm bare, he is too, his gaze intense on mine, wary, waiting for me to say no. For a moment, when Courfeyrac again comes to my mind - unbidden, and for this moment, unwelcome; unwelcome when I am feeling at last safe, loved, no longer _lonely_ , in Combeferre's arms - I want to do it; to let the word slip between my lips, a product of my brain, not my heart. But my body leans closer, tips my head back onto his shoulder to open my throat to his mouth, and I feel his plush lips press damply against my skin. My back arches as he breathes damp air over the sites of kisses, scrapes his teeth over my skin, and my blood is beginning to sing for him, aching for more of whatever this is that he is giving me. _Love_ , something in me answers, and I don't deny it, nor the effect that it has on me.

He wraps his arms around my waist, one flattened over my belly, the other playing tentatively with the curls between my legs, fingertips brushing the beginning of my erection. He asks me if this is alright, and I murmur, "Yes." I close my eyes as his fingers close around me, smooth strokes, and I feel the blood rush south, letting out a soft whimper.

He breathes shakily against my neck, his own hardness insistent against the curve of my bottom; his grip tightens minutely, speeds up, and I let out a louder, more desperate noise, the first syllable of a name - but whose, I don't know. Courfeyrac is present, as always, a painful absence in my heart, a guilty lump in the pit of my stomach - but Combeferre's warm body is behind me, his hand wrapped around me, and it is his tongue tracing patterns on my shoulder that makes me moan, irretrievable in the silence of the room. He whispers again, "Is this alright?"

"Yes," I sigh, meaning it more every time he asks.

His hand closes around my wrist, turning me around, and he brings my hand down to him, wrapping my fingers around him with a shaky exhale. I copy his movements, pumping him, and his head drops forward to rest on my shoulder, harsh breathing spurring me on. He shudders, hips thrusting into my hand, and moans, low and needy and incredible. I moan in response and he smiles briefly before his eyes flutter shut and his hips speed up, chasing his climax. He whimpers and I feel him jerk in my hand, spraying my wrist and forearm with his release as he breathes heavily against my shoulder, legs turned to rubber.

His thighs are shaking as my hand slides over him, milking every last drop, slicked by the liquid still drooling out of the tip. He eventually pushes my hand away, drawing me closer, his own hand moving faster. The touch of him around me is delicious, driving every thought out but that of bringing the sweet, smoky curl of need in my belly to its raging finale; I rock my hips into his hand, breath beginning to come in pants, trembling like a leaf.

"You're exquisite," he murmurs, and breathes my name - "Jehan." - like a prayer, his hand cupping my chin suddenly, turning my head to kiss him, and I gasp into his mouth. He is insistent now, feeling the quivering of my body against his, taut as a bowstring; his tongue slides against mine as he squeezes and I whine, my hips bucking erratically into his fist, an inferno starting that I can't hope to quell without him as he lets my chin go. My eyes open to look at him, and I understand what it is to feel whole.

This is what love is like. The way all the pieces come together; his hand in mine, bodies pressed together, trading kisses that seem as natural, as easy as breathing; this is how it is to love a man. His eyes are dark, passionate, searing me from the inside out; his lips part on another breathless sigh. The heat inside me is a coiled spring about to snap; I gasp against his lips, incoherent expulsions of air as my limbs shake and his thumb rubs over the head, and I feel myself release, spurting over his fist with a cry of his name - _his_ \- that I can neither stifle nor take back.

I am his, now. And now that I know what it's like to feel complete, it's no good to be by myself.


	7. SPRING 1917

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grantaire finally makes an appearance!
> 
> However, folks, be warned that this is a very emotional(/ly draining) chapter. There are serious themes of violence, mental illness and depression, and there are respective trigger warnings in place for this chapter!
> 
>  
> 
> **MAIN WARNING: SUICIDE, also CHOKING, DEPRESSION, PTSD**
> 
>  
> 
> N.B.: the letters from Courfeyrac in this chapter and the consequent chapters include quotes from real letters sent by World War One soldiers. If you want to read them for yourselves, I found the majority of them [here](http://www.arthursletters.com/), [here](http://spartacus-educational.com/FWWletters.htm) and [here](http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/debateni/blogs/first-world-war-centenary-letters-from-the-trenches-reveal-horror-faced-by-our-boys-30480316.html)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, very kindly beta’ed by the lovely [laurencombeferre](http://archiveofourown.org/users/laurencombeferre), with so much gratitude! Any mistakes remaining are wholly my own.

**SPRING 1917**

_March 21st 1917_

_Dear J,_

_~~Thank you for your letter. I would have written sooner, but circumstances intervened and~~ _

_~~I hope you are well, and that you are being looked after at home. I understand that you must be very lonely without me~~ _

_~~I don't understand. Were you too impatient to wait?~~ _

Courfeyrac gives Feuilly back his pencil before walking down to the end of the trench, where Bahorel is taking his watch. Mud sucks at his boots, seeping into his already filthy khaki trousers, and he sighs, crumpling the half-written letter back up into his top pocket. Sinking back against the bank of the trench, it takes several steadying breaths before he feels like he can open his eyes again without breaking into sobs. Bahorel, glassy eyes for once focused, is watching him.

"They're quiet," he murmurs, lips barely moving, green eyes shifting back across from Courfeyrac's face to no-man's-land, waiting for German fire to begin again. The silence rings in their ears; after six months of warfare, no man in the trenches is used to such unnatural silence. Courfeyrac stands on the duckboards six inches below Bahorel on the firestep; they could swap positions and Bahorel would still be able to see over the parapet, and Courfeyrac could not.

All of a sudden, explosions - flashes of white light and noise that makes the ground - and Bahorel, standing six feet three inches in his boots and looking all of six years old as he covers his ears and sobs - shatter the short-lived silence. The trenches hit were close to their own; they can hear the neighbouring trenches raising the alarm, a hubbub of panicked voices they can't decipher over the shelling spurring them to ready themselves until they hear Feuilly, voice strident with panic, screaming at the other end of the trench:

"GAS!"

Courfeyrac swears - he left his mask behind in the dugout - and bolts towards the sound of Feuilly's voice, only to see the cloud - thick, low-lying - creeping towards him, inching with caressing fingers over the parapet. There's absolute pandemonium in the trench as the other lads desperately try to fit both their masks and their bayonets at the same time, ready for the Germans' advancement into the trench. A streak of blond curls shoots past him, mask half hanging off, and Enjolras - calm, cool, collected Enjolras - is panicking, eyes rolling like a spooked horse, screaming for the others to get out of the vapour's way. It snakes into every nook and crevice it can find, searching for those too slow or too weak to avoid it with gentle fingers that will feel like hell itself burning them alive.

The Germans are advancing behind the cloud, he knows. Masks on, rifles cocked, impassive, implacable. The screaming of the trenches in front has started to die out; echoes of rifle blasts, the occasional machine-gun fire out over no-man's-land as the British try to slow the advance of the Germans into the poisoned trenches. They pass bodies, men who have been smashed by the shells carrying the gas, men who have been picked off with rifle fire beforehand. The trench is empty of the living, except for the two men fleeing like demons out of hell from the approach of the gas and the Germans it is shrouding.

Courfeyrac looks behind him desperately, trying to catch any sight of the huge, hulking figure of Bahorel racing behind them, but there's nothing. Nothing through that cloud of gas, not a single moving figure, nor even a shadow. He can't fight back a sob, shouting Bahorel's name, fighting the fierce grip Enjolras has on him to turn back, to run back into the embrace of that cloud and drag Bahorel out of it - but Enjolras hangs on grimly, tugs him down the trench, eyes watering. Courfeyrac stumbles, falls, cracks his head against the duckboards. His head spinning, blackness threatening at the edges of his vision and encroaching faster than the oncoming gas cloud, Courfeyrac can only lie there, too dazed to get up. He waves Enjolras away, spluttering through his mouthful of mud -  
"Go, go!"

Enjolras shakes his head, tries to drag him to his feet, but the gas is feet away - too close. Courfeyrac is struggling now even to keep his eyes open; physical and emotion exhaustion is weighing him down, limbs like lead. Feuilly, at the end of the trench, is begging them to catch up, to join the rest of the cowering soldiers in the dugout beyond, but even he knows that there's no way Enjolras will be able to drag the half-senseless Courfeyrac to the safe haven. Enjolras, ever stubborn, kneels down, removing his mask and buckling it, fumbling clumsily, behind Courfeyrac's head.

Courfeyrac remembers his promise.  _I will come back to you_.

He loses consciousness as the first masked figure emerges from behind the dissipating fog.  


* * *

 

There has been nothing from Courfeyrac since I sent my last letter. Combeferre is worried, worried that I am regretting everything I - we - have done since Christmas Eve. He visits every day still, bringing more books and the small, shy first blooms he picks for me from the woods. I kiss him hello, take the flowers and arrange them as artfully as I can manage in  milk bottles and jam jars in my kitchen, but my mind - eternally - is on Courfeyrac in France. The silence now is worse than ever before. This time, I am not just worried that he will die. I am worried that he will die, alone, heartbroken, and the last words he has heard from me are that I have replaced him with somebody else.

Not that Combeferre is a replacement. Nobody could ever truly replace Courfeyrac. He is so vibrant, so loving, so vital - as though the sun, brilliant and fierce, was trapped within the body of one human boy; everyone he comes into contact with is naturally warmed by his presence, gravitates towards him, orbits him in awe. Combeferre is not like that.

Combeferre is quiet, cool, a glacier. Slow and steady and unrelenting.

He has begun to let himself in, now. He has keys of his own.

I'm outside in the garden when Combeferre arrives, Bossuet and another young man in tow. Bossuet seems to know the newcomer well, as he's chatting animatedly about the piece of furniture Combeferre has commissioned him to make, and the other is nodding and interjecting with intelligent comments about joinery and woodcarving techniques that go rather over my head. Combeferre clears his throat gently and Bossuet stops in mid flow, laughing sheepishly and pressing his friend forward, seemingly for my inspection.

The young man has a mop of unruly black curls tied back with a ribbon like a girl's, and sharp, clear hazel eyes. Combeferre introduces him as Adam before he cuts Combeferre off with the gruff insistence that I call him "Grantaire" or nothing at all.

"Grantaire is also a conscientious objector, of a sort," says Bossuet with a sly grin aimed sideways at our new companion, and Grantaire laughs sardonically, pulling the ribbon out of his hair to run a paint-flecked hand through his wild locks.

"I would be, my friend," he says, wrapping the ribbon around his wrist, "if I had any conscience at all."

Bossuet laughs, and Combeferre and I smile. Grantaire smirks at us before pulling a hipflask out of his pocket and taking a long draught, sighing when he swallows and screwing the lid back on carefully. He plucks one of the leaves off the hedge lining my front garden and scratches patterns into the back of it with a thorn, pine trees and arrows and hexagonal tessellations like honeycomb. I watch, fascinated, as he decorates leaf after leaf with the same designs, occasionally scratching long, sweeping curved lines like the bow of a pair of lips until he screws those leaves up, dropping them in crumpled pieces to the floor.

"I really ought to start carrying my papers and paints around with me again," he sighs, kicking at the small pile of shredded flora by his foot, "instead of vandalising my neighbours' hedgerows." He grins at me, displaying slightly uneven teeth, and takes another sip from his flask.

"Are you a painter, then?"

"Of a sort, although without much talent," he replies, making a so-so hand gesture. Bossuet behind him makes an outraged noise, and interjects forcefully with, "Don't listen to a word he says, Jehan. His paintings are marvellous - he captures such life, such vivacity! And the colours - the colours are gorgeous. I've been trying to commission him for years, but he insists he won't take my money nor waste my time with anything he has created." He glares at Grantaire affectionately, and Grantaire shrugs, smile belied by the discomfort in the expression of his eyes.

"The curse of most artists, I would imagine," I say lightly, trying to diffuse the tension. "I'm told Combeferre's stitches are works of art, although I have never had excuse to need them myself." I grin at Combeferre, and he laughs.

Grantaire smiles. "Ah, now you see I can vouch for that. Many a time have I come back from a boxing match with cuts and bruises that only our dear Combeferre's artist's hands can heal! I dream of the neatness of black thread, the delicacy of the needle-"

Combeferre swats at him with his hat, and Grantaire laughs, his face suddenly - for a split second - luminous as the smile reaches his eyes, his pallid cheeks flushing slightly. Combeferre just rolls his eyes fondly.

Combeferre asks Bossuet how the wardrobe he has asked for is coming along, and Grantaire settles beside me, watching me pick up my trowel and dig neat circles in the soil to plant narcissus and poppies and primroses side by side. He strokes a thumb, broad and coarse with a splash of brilliant violet paint under the nail, over the petal of a small, still semi-budded narcissus, and comments, "Narcissus is one of my favourite flowers. Nothing reminds me more of how utterly selfish and vain humanity can be than that tale."

I frown, confused. Where has this come from? "You can't mean that, surely?"

"I do," Grantaire says in an almost bored tone, laying back on the grass but turning his head to look at me. "Humans are, by nature, greedy. Vain. The war was supposed to be over by Christmas. 'Come and join up, boys, beat away that bloody Kaiser by Christmas, then it's home to eggnog and Christmas pudding and glory forever!' For most of them, it's a pine box and six feet of earth. And if they do manage to come back off the Front, they're blown to pieces or broken in their heads or worse. Do I see glory for those poor beggars? No. I see Death waiting for them, same as all the others, stood by their side, smiling and handing them the damn scythe to do it themselves. There's no glory in it at all. It's death and agony all wrapped up in one pretty parcel, tied with a ribbon patterned with 'dulce et decorum est'."

Bossuet is shaking by the end of Grantaire's little speech. His face is white as a sheet. Beside him, Combeferre's face is anxious, his eyes centered on me. I become aware of a tremor in my own limbs, my heart pounding in my chest. It takes a moment to articulate my voice enough to speak. "Whilst I agree with you on the -  _futility_  of the war, you'll forgive Bossuet and I if... if we prefer to think that our loved ones will be coming home.  _Alive_."

I take Bossuet's hand gently and lead him inside, sitting him down at the kitchen table with a mug of strong, sweet tea. "Are you alright?" I ask quietly, settling in the chair opposite him and running a thumb over the back of his hand. He nods, swallowing nervously, before his gaze rises to meet mine, eyes filmed with tears.  
"He's going to come back, isn't he? Iwan? Iwan won't... he won't... He'll come back, won't he?"

I take a deep breath, squeezing his hand gently. "You know I can't make any promises," I say softly, and he nods, a choked noise escaping him before he takes a quick gulp of tea to quieten himself. "I can't promise you anything. But he will come home, Bossuet. Oliver always-" The pain lances through me, a lightning strike; I tamp it down viciously. I've made my bed, and I will lie in it. "-Oliver has always said he's taking care of Joly for you, and Oliver... Oliver would never let any of them get left behind. I can promise you that."

"But he left you behind," Bossuet blurts out, a product of pain and fear rather than cruelty, and for that reason I can brush it off without a sting. If it had come from Grantaire, from Combeferre, from anyone other than the frightened young man in front of me at the moment, it would have caught, lodged in my heart behind paper ribs, and it would have torn me apart. But it did not come from them, so it does not.

"I know," I murmur, voice more hollow than I would have wished. He apologises quickly, but I smile and shake my head. "It's fine, don't worry. I know he did. But... But he didn't want to. He... He wanted to fight, but he never wanted to leave me."

Bossuet nods sadly. I smile, squeezing his hand again. "He'll come back, Bossuet. Both of them will."  


* * *

_  
Sunday, 23rd March 1917_

_Dear Jehan,_

_I hope you don't mind me writing, but there's news I need to give you, and I'm afraid I shall have to be as blunt as possible._

_On March 21st, there was a gas attack in the trenches in the field. The Germans fired on our trenches with mustard gas shells. I don't want to worry you overmuch, but one of the trenches hit was Oliver's, and he and several of our comrades have been injured in the attack._

_Oliver remains sedated here on my ward in the field hospital whilst he recuperates from his injuries. He has, however, been awake and alert, and when he is, he asks for you. I know it's none of my business, but I think he needs to hear from you at the moment, to know that you care about him. When he is awake, he talks of you - so beautifully, with such fond words and brilliant, joyful smiles. He misses you, I think. He reads all your letters, over and over, sleeps with them beneath his pillow._

_He loves you, you know. And trust me, Jehan, he has forgiven you. He has long forgiven you._

_With kindest regards,_

_Dr. Iwan Joly_  


* * *

_  
Sunday, 23rd March 1917_

_Samuel,_

_Before you read this, please, make me a promise. I know how close you've been getting with Oliver's friend back home. Jehan, isn't it? Anyway, promise you will keep the contents of this letter to yourself. I have already written to Jehan regarding the information to follow. I don't want to worry him, and the last thing I want to do is drive a wedge between you two as well, but please. Do **not**  tell him anything that follows._

_There has been a horrible attack in the trenches of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. There were no fatalities as a direct result of the attack, but... Samuel, it's awful. I feel nauseous every time I think of it. I cannot stop trembling, my stomach roils and I can't sleep for the sight of him in my head, glassy-eyed and vacant with that horrible hole in his temple - Samuel, it's - Oliver doesn't yet know. And he can't, promise me you won't tell Jehan, don't let him find out through a letter. Private Bahorel is dead, self-inflicted in the hospital. His commanding officer was brought in after him, the poor fellow was in shock, and he picked up the revolver faster than we could stop him and_

_I am breaking apart, Samuel. I can't cope with seeing things like this happen every day in front of me. It's strange, that when it's enemy bullets fired by the Germans, I find it easy to sew it up, to pad them up with bandages and see them away. But this... When I see it done by their own hand, Samuel, it's more than I can stand. I feel everything slipping through my fingers like water; I try to hold it together, I try so hard, and I'm failing so horribly. I'm a doctor. I'm supposed to save lives, I'm supposed to take them out of the trench lines and heal them and make them whole again. But I couldn't save him; he was completely shattered. Broken in his mind, where all my medicines and stitches and anaesthetic couldn't do him a blind bit of good._

_I feel it's coming, Samuel. I can't do this. I can't look after myself, let alone any of these poor bastards they drag in for me to patch up and heal. I couldn't save Bahorel, and I can't save any of the others either. They're all going to be shot or blown to pieces or gassed or stabbed or collapse from exhaustion and I can do absolutely nothing about it, Samuel._

_I am failing._

_Your friend,_

_Dr. Iwan Joly_


	8. SPRING 1917 - LEAVE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay so this isn't as heavy (I hope) as the last chapter, but there's still trigger warnings for depression and PTSD because although it's not really explicit, it's kind of there in the background so just a heads-up...
> 
> N.B.: significant parts of the letters from Courfeyrac in this chapter come from letters sent by Roland Leighton to Vera Brittain, as transcribed in her memoir _Testament of Youth_. As always, other resources include quotes from real letters sent by World War One soldiers. If you want to read them for yourselves, I found the majority of them [here](http://www.arthursletters.com/), [here](http://spartacus-educational.com/FWWletters.htm) and [here](http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/debateni/blogs/first-world-war-centenary-letters-from-the-trenches-reveal-horror-faced-by-our-boys-30480316.html)!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, very kindly beta'ed by the lovely [laurencombeferre](http://archiveofourown.org/users/laurencombeferre), with so much gratitude! (Thank you so much for the phrasing help, again. She saves me (and therefore, all of you!) from myself and my overflowery language a lot, bless her.) Any mistakes remaining are wholly my own.

**SPRING 1917 - LEAVE**

April has already blossomed when Courfeyrac's letter comes. Combeferre, as he's awake earliest on the weekends, pottering around in the kitchen whilst I laze around in bed for a few extra minutes, collects the envelope from the postman and brings it up to me with a resigned expression on his face. I think he finds it difficult, still, to accept the claim Courfeyrac still has on my heart; although I love Combeferre dearly, with all the frantic desires of my heart, Courfeyrac was first and therefore will always be special. I kiss Combeferre's cheek softly as I take the letter, laying my head on his shoulder to read it, trying to show that I will not shut myself off to him just because correspondence from Courfeyrac - the elephant in the room between us - has arrived on our doorstep.

_April 17th, 1917_

_Dear J,_

_I have been granted three days' home leave, for British air to hopefully clear my lungs and soothe some of these old aches. I will be arriving on the 22nd at the station, the twelve o'clock train. Will you come and meet me? Bring Combeferre. I should like to meet him. Anyone special to you is special to me, you know that._

_Always your adoring,_

_Oliver._

I take a deep, shuddering breath, joy filling my chest and spreading like quicksilver through every limb, so light and sparkling I feel buoyant, as though I will rise off the bed and float amongst the clouds, laughing for pure exhilaration. He's coming home! I haven't seen him in almost a year, and he will be coming home. I will feel his arm around my shoulders again, his hand squeezing mine in hello, feel the glow of that brilliant smile warming my cheeks and making me, for a moment, golden. My own smile is blinding, ecstatic, and Combeferre beside me lets out a desperately unhappy noise which he tries to morph into a sigh of happiness. My heart twinges. Of course; I haven't thought at all about his feelings on the matter. How would it feel, for him to meet the man who we both know still loves me, and I him - at least a little? And how will it feel, for Oliver, to meet him - the man whose affections have stolen mine, from him?

I take Combeferre's hand, brushing my lips over the knuckle, and he gazes at me, blue eyes sad but trying to hide it with a shaky, plastic smile. I run my fingers through his hair, as much affection as I can pour into every movement, and kiss him again, soft and chaste but reassuring. I have let Oliver go, as much as I am able; Combeferre is my new priority, my new love, the person I will come home to when I have waved Oliver off at the station, this time with dry eyes. I have promised myself to him, and I have broken enough promises already. This one, I am going to keep.

"Oliver will be here soon," he says quietly, his voice slightly strained. "You'll need to dress yourself if we're to go and meet him."

"One more minute," I say, gentle, my eyes locked on his. The pain, the doubt, in his eyes is excruciating. He trusts me, I know that, but he is aware that I have left one sworn lover for another, and that Courfeyrac stakes a claim on me he will never be able to loosen or overtake. My hand cups his cheek, brushing a too-soft thumb over the angular, slanted cheekbone, and I press my lips to his, unhurried and loving. "I have somebody more important to deal with, for just one more minute."

Finally he smiles against my lips, and the tension bleeds out of his shoulders like pus lanced from a wound. I smile at him, nuzzling my face against his shoulder, breathing out slowly. He wraps an arm around my waist and tilts my chin up, dragging me out of my sedentary position to draw me deeper, a soft but somehow hungrier, more desperate embrace overtaking him, as though I'm water in his fingers he's trying to hold on to even as I slip away.  
  


* * *

  
The shriek of brakes and the long whistle of exhaled steam heralds the twelve o'clock train from York into the station. As soon as I hear it, I'm flying up the stairs to the platform as though wearing Perseus' winged sandals - so desperate I am to see his dear face, hear that clear, warm voice calling my name over the hubbub of mothers and sisters greeting their darling soldiers back from the front. The moment I see him, the familiar mop of dark curls and the brilliant, if tired, smile, I fling myself at him like a child greeting a long-absent favourite uncle, and he laughs and drops his bag, arms around me. He's warm under my arms, but thin - much thinner than I remember - and he winces as I brush his shoulder, finally letting go slightly to get a proper look at him. His face, around the ears and the underside of his chin, is blemished red and silverish by turn with scars, as though doused in some chemical. My stomach flips. If there were visible marks here, who knows what marks linger underneath the handsome khaki uniform?

Gaze roving over his face, my attention is caught by the tired dark eyes smiling down at me. The expression there is not the same as I remember, sadder somehow, and harder, with a strange, unnatural anger simmering behind them. Anger is not an emotion I am used to from Courfeyrac, and its new and unwelcome presence on his face unsettles me. There is something different about him now, something the war has given him, something it has torn away, that worries me even more, although I can't pin it down. His eyes that speak of things I cannot imagine, cannot even begin to understand; but he picks his bag up and smiles again, broader albeit somewhat forced, as Combeferre, who had hung back awkwardly during our reunion, finally steps forward and offers his hand, eyes flickering nervously over Courfeyrac's disfigured face.

He doesn't give his name. Courfeyrac looks to me to introduce him, and I tear my gaze away from the blessed sight of Oliver, at home, alive and as well as can be expected, to do so.

"Oliver, this is Stephen. Combeferre, he prefers. And Combeferre, this is Oliver Courfeyrac." My belly is in knots as I wait for the inevitable awkwardness, but Courfeyrac instead smiles and shakes Combeferre's hand, and Combeferre mumbles something that was probably supposed to be a 'hello' before offering to take Courfeyrac's bag. He's gently rebuffed, so he takes my hand - somewhat more firmly than probably necessary, if the threatened expression he fleetingly adopts as he glances over his shoulder at Courfeyrac is anything to go by - and leads us out of the station, silent as the grave.

"You look well," Courfeyrac says to me happily as we forge ahead, Combeferre long behind us. He is gazing up at the sky - brilliant blue, an anomaly in the middle of the weeks of grey skies and downpours which usually come with a Yorkshire April in the Dales - with wonder in his eyes, and his head turns as he hears the birds twittering their songs to one another from leafy, blossom-filled boughs above our heads, a vaulted ceiling of greenery as we take the meandering path from the station to the main road.

"I am," I nod, dropping Combeferre's hand for a moment to pick a daffodil, brilliant yellow and shining like the sun in a sea of overlong green wayside vegetation. Courfeyrac takes it from me and gently places it behind my ear, the flower's fragrance sweet in my nose and the petals tickling my cheek. He beams at me, sweeter even than our meeting on the platform, and I am reminded of our summers together, the scent of flowers in the air and the taste of berries on his lips as he kisses me, lazily, lying on our backs, bathed in sunlight with our fingers loosely linked between us. His eyes fall to my mouth, smiling, and an expression of longing comes over his face. The brief, insane urge to kiss him is over almost before it even hit, but the bright mood is ruined, and my cheeks flood red with guilt. Shame-faced, I take the flower out of my hair and instead hold it awkwardly for a moment before subtly letting it drop. Combeferre treads on it as he follows us, and I don't think I imagine the vindictive grind of his boot-heel, trampling the poor delicate petals into the stony footpath.  
  


* * *

  
Whitby is cold, grey and cloudy, wind whipping our hair against our cheeks. Strolling around the town does us no good; we simply sit up on the clifftop, by the Abbey, watching steel-grey waves roll and thunder against rocks hundreds of feet below. Only the gulls, screaming overhead as they bomb the water, flapping in midair, two males with their black wings fighting viciously above our heads, drown out the silence, sharp and droning, in my head. We go to the beach instead, wet sand sucking at my toes as I take my boots off and roll up my trousers - the only one; Combeferre, his eyes hard as flint on my back, stays stiffly dressed up, the stoic country doctor, and Courfeyrac struggles too much with the sodden laces of his boots to remove them - to stride through the surf, playfully kicking splashes of water at them, trying to lighten them both up. Combeferre is jealous, Courfeyrac suddenly sullen and brooding; the good humour is leeching out of me faster and faster, but I try nevertheless to cheer them, to keep everything as blissfully happy as we had been just hours before.

"You've done well remembering to write. I barely had to remind you," I tease Courfeyrac gently, and nudge him with my elbow. His response is lightning-fast, too fast for me to anticipate and stop it: he snarls, a bitingly harsh sound I never thought to hear from those familiar lips, and flings his arm out to block my playful touch, hurling me into the waves as he storms ahead up the beach, never for a moment looking back. I land painfully on my back, wind knocked out of me, and a wave crashes over my head, drenching me and filling my mouth and nose with bitter saltwater. Combeferre helps me up, with a secretive smile he thinks I don't see; I hiss angrily at him like an affronted cat, and rush off up the beach after Courfeyrac, grabbing at the back of his uniform.

He whirls around, incensed, and the anger I saw earlier has nothing on his expression now: hurt, furious, broken. Raw around the edges, too tender to touch; exactly how I felt when he told me the first time that he would be leaving for the front. He looks abandoned.

"How dare you?" he spits, tears burning in his eyes, and he shoves me back. I stumble a couple of steps, but hold my ground, anger beginning to simmer beneath the calm surface I am trying to maintain. He advances, and I remember with a sudden burst of fear the pistol lurking in his belt.

"How dare you with your letters and your constant begging me to tell you the truth and your nagging and whining like a woman?" His voice is razor-edged, every word designed to strike at the most vulnerable places; the barbs catch, lodge in my chest, hitting every guilty thought I have internalised for months, hitting every doubt I have had about myself with his usual perfect aim. "How dare you uncross your legs for the first man to come calling weeks after I left? Was I not enough, Jehan? Did I not please you, did I not make you happy enough? Or is it that it was a fucking you needed, a good hard rutting like a mare in heat because I was gone and you needed the satisfaction? How dare you write me that letter - _My darling Oliver_ \- _I love you so very much_ \- how dare you write me that letter and then - and then -"

The tears are rolling down his face and he screams at the sky, brutal, his voice hoarse as sandpaper. He falls to his knees, head buried in his hands, and sobs, harsh and angry as though his heart is breaking. I stand paralysed, helpless in the face of his agony, my own ire extinguished faster than a snuffed candle. I can hear, in his shrieked words, what he is not saying. There is no true anger at me in that outburst; he is raging at the war, at the thousands of miles of earth and sea and warfare that held us apart, that disconnected us like a mouse nibbling at fraying rope until the last strand, his final hold on me, snapped. He is still fiercely, painfully in love; he still clings to the image of me at home, in that field, with his hand in mine and his lips on my skin, to bring him through every exploding shell and every bullet and every dead comrade he watches fall in that endless expanse between himself and the death he has waiting on the battlefield. Because now that he understands - now that he knows that I no longer hold him in my mind's eye quite as I used to - he has lost everything. I have ruined him; I have killed him already, without the need for bullets or infection or trenches.

"I'm sorry," I say, for the thousandth time. It has never been enough, and nor is it enough now.  
  


* * *

  
Combeferre and I have our first true fight that evening.

He flings at me accusations I can neither confirm nor deny - "Are you in love with him, Jehan? Do you regret us? Is that it? Am I simply second best? Am I simply what you've _settled for_ because you can't have what you _want_?" - and, when his anger, so slow to rouse but fierce and terrible in its wrath, is spent, he simply lays his head on my knee, tears trailing down his cheeks as he grips my calf and begs, voice desperate, for me not to leave him.

I cannot stop my own tears at that point. I have hurt so many people with my selfishness, my need to be loved, and I cannot keep him enslaved to me, chained by his affection and my need to not be alone. But equally I can't make him go; because I love him, selfishly, and in my own way; and to be without him would be disastrous to us both.

He comes to my bed when the stars are finally beginning to fade, as dawn is spreading golden rose hues over the sky like Grantaire's smooth, flowing lines over canvas, and we lie together, neither sleeping, just listening to one another breathe as we try to drown out our thoughts.

Courfeyrac spends the last two days of his leave at home, with his mother and sisters. It is a pain deep in my chest to acknowledge that, even with his family, he is alone. The change in him, back from the Front, has convinced me of that. Gone is the carefree boy with the bubbling laughter and the sweet, sharp berry-stained lips, the boy with summer in his eyes and hair and smile. Instead he is cold and so, so disenchanted; detached, as though the human part of him has been torn out and left to die somewhere cold. Of all I know of the war - and from what I know now, it has been truly only a very little, even despite the letters from Joly I have seen - this is the worst. We have sent men, boys - brothers, uncles, cousins, fathers, sons - to the front; and we have got back empty shells filled with demons we can't see and hurts we can't heal.  
  


* * *

_  
May 14th, 1917_

_Dear J,_

_I apologise for my outburst when last we met. I understand that it's difficult being alone, especially for you. You have always thrived on the feeling of loving and being loved; I hope Combeferre keeps you happy, in that sense. I know that you loved me, and you know that I love you, so sharply I feel it like a knife sometimes. But sometimes bones must be rebroken and reset in order to heal properly, or so Joly informs me, if they were jostled or healed crooked before. I hold out hope that everything, eventually, will be all right for you. I assure you, it will be for me._

_It's a strange thing to fall in and out of love with somebody, isn't it? Separation amplifies every tiny thing until it feels as though there's a chasm of personality, not just space and time, between us. I suppose our village at home exists, and that there was once a person called Jehan there who had loved me. But you seem very far away. Do I seem a ghost in the void to you? I expect I must. Like a character in one of your books, or someone who has been dreamt of and never actually seen. The past few months, I found myself forgetting the feeling of your hands in mine, or the running of your thumbnail over my back. Perhaps those memories got shelled out of me. But I remembered the exact colour of your hair, or how many freckles dusted across your nose, strangely, because I could take your picture out of my pocket and remind myself (although naturally, strawberry blond shows up the same grey as everything else in portraits)._

_I'm sorry. I babble. But I will see you soon, when I'm back for good. I can feel something coming, and we are all hoping that it will end the war, one way or another. I am determined not to break that promise to you, my friend._

_Always,_

_Oliver._


	9. SUMMER 1917

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poetry and more letters...
> 
> Sorry for the slower updates now, friends - unfortunately university is back with a vengeance! I will endeavour for as regular updates as I can manage, though. Don't worry, it's not been abandoned!
> 
> N.B.: Courfeyrac's letter is borrowed heavily from, with the utmost respect and with no malintent, [a letter from Company Sergeant-Major James Milne to his wife](https://aggsliterature.wordpress.com/wwi-letters-home/) in 1918. I would therefore like to express that although I have adapted his words slightly to use for my characters, this was a letter from a real man, like many of the letters I have used previously. Again, no malicious intent is meant towards Company Sergeant-Major Milne or his family, and I hope that I have treated what I have used of it with the delicacy it deserves.
> 
> Also, the first poem quoted is an actual poem by Keats, _On a Dream_. The second is my own, (wholly pretentious) work!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'ed again by the lovely [laurencombeferre](http://archiveofourown.org/users/laurencombeferre). What an angel - I've no idea what I'd do without her!

**SUMMER 1917**

Combeferre finds me when I am laid in the garden, hair fanned out beneath me, enjoying the sun's warmth as I read beside the flowerbeds, long grass occasionally tickling my face when I move to turn the pages. He whistles his customary hello, and I sit up to greet him. For a few weeks after Courfeyrac's home leave, things had been awkward - he unwilling to touch me, me barely able to look at him without feeling that heartwrenching guilt swamp me again - and there was a moment where I thought, perhaps, that he was lost to me; but the next minute he had curled up beside me on the bed, pressed a mug of tea into my hand, and told me that it was forgotten. I don't want to forget  - to sweep it under the rug as though it never happened - but I understand what he means. The events are not forgotten, but the rush of emotions and the lashing out at one another - we are each, by the other, forgiven.

"The Romantics again?" He asks, pointing to the gold-letter title on the cover of the book, and I smile and turn the stack of poetry books around so that he can read the authors: Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats. At the moment, I have open a book of Robert Burns' poetry.

"I was thinking about Courfeyrac's friend," I admit quietly, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear. "He was Scottish. I was wondering if, perhaps, when Courfeyrac comes back, I could make him something with a fitting Scottish ode to his friend on it, in case he wants to visit the grave."

Combeferre nods, settling down on the grass beside me and idly flipping through my collection of Keats' work. He pauses on _Bright Star_ , the page creased and crumpled and smudged from drops of tea where I have read it, over and over. He smiles and shows me the page.

"A favourite of yours?"

I hesitate for a moment, my eyes scanning his face, and his expression changes - hardens minutely - before he pulls up a daisy from the grass and starts looking for its fellows, to link together into a chain.

"No," I say quietly, copying him as I pull up a couple of daisies still with their pink-tipped petals half-furled, and pass them to him to use in the chain. "A favourite of Courfeyrac's."

"Would I were as steadfast as thou art," he reads, eyes on his work as his clever fingers carefully knit the daisy stalks together, "it seems fitting, for him." His gaze lifts to meet mine, and for a moment I think he is going to end the observation there. I think his words are a reproach, that I have repaid Courfeyrac's devotion with agony; but that is my own head speaking, placing those words in his mouth. He continues. "And for you. Always so strong, so loyal to your friends. You didn't owe him anything, Jehan."

"If you say so," I answer, trying to make peace of the moment of awkwardness, and hand him another flower. He traces the petals of the roses to his right, vibrant sunshine yellow, the colour of Courfeyrac's laughter and Combeferre's own smile. Grantaire helped me to plant the garden by explaining his preoccupation with colour in his art. When Combeferre speaks, he sees a soft, soothing blue the colour of violets; Bossuet's laughter is the exact same shade of pinkish purple as foxgloves, and Joly - who Grantaire, briefly, has met - has a nervous disposition and tends to make small clearing-of-the-throat noises with the colour of mint leaves. Everyone has their own small corner of my garden, and the effect, though disorganised, is a riot of colour that never fails to bring a smile to Grantaire's face, and it's more than worth it for the rarity of that reward.

"Grantaire helped me with those." I allow a ladybird crawling up a blade of grass to cross onto my hand, watching the small dot of red scuttle quickly over my palm before it disappears in a blot of whirring wings into the sunlight to land somewhere else. "It's as much his garden as my own."

"That'll explain why he loves it here so much," Combeferre nods, turning the page to read another poem. Within moments, he's as engrossed as I had been before he arrived, and I allow myself a fond smile as I carefully take the daisy chain from his hands to wind it carefully through the wind-ruffled brown locks on his head. He smiles and tries to brush it off, and I push his hand down.

"No, keep it. You're my May King."

"Jehan, it's June already." He laughs, putting the book down on the top of the pile, and starts looking for more flowers hiding amongst the grass. "Very well, but if I'm to be a king then you must be as well. What would you like for your crown this time, your highness?"

"I don't mind."  Instead I cast my gaze around, past the gate, and see, at the side of the road, a patch of poppies, red as the sunset and in full bloom. Crossing the road, I crouch down to pick as many as I can hold without crushing the stems, and head back to Combeferre as he calls, "What about forget-me-nots?"

"Grantaire says blue is your colour," I reply, distracted, as I carefully select the biggest book of the set - Shakespeare's sonnets - to carefully press the flowers in. I stack the other books up on top of it and turn to find Combeferre grinning at me, his eyes amused and fond.

"Oh, Grantaire says this, Grantaire says that," he teases affectionately. "Who made him the world authority?"

"Forgive me if I take an _artist's_ advice on colours," I respond, unable to help the grin, "I rather think he would be better with aesthetics than a doctor."

Combeferre looks mock-outraged, and tosses a beautifully made - incredible work, given how delicate the stalks of forget-me-nots are - wreath of tiny blue flowers at me. I am always in awe of the work he can do with his hands - sew stitches, cure illness, wind the tiniest of threads together to make things like this. In awe, and also more than a little jealous, looking down at my own slender hands with their ink-stained fingers and bitten nails.  
"You'll not want this then."

I place it on my head obediently, a blush rising in my cheeks, and he smiles softly, cupping my chin to press a tender kiss to my lips.

"It looks smashing on you. Especially with the colouring of your hair."  


* * *

_  
June 21st, 1917_

_Dear Oliver,_

_No need for apologies. I quite understand, as well, what Joly means by the resetting of bones, and although perhaps not in quite the same way as you, I feel I have had the bone reset as well. I hope you feel better after your homecoming, though it was brief and though we had such a time together._

_Back here the flowers are blooming, such colours as you would scarcely believe! I've been pressing as many as I could find to send to you, but I forget which books I have left them in, and now I can't find any. I'll have to go on a treasure hunt of sorts, and I'm sure you can imagine what a needle in a haystack that will be, with all the books I have at home. Nevertheless, hopefully within the next few letters I will have found some, and will send them to you for good luck tokens._

_And that reminds me of something else. I found the book of Keats you gave me for my birthday three years ago last night, though, and have been reading it religiously since. I remember how you used to tease - that the poets were a religion to me, and that all the Latin I could speak came from reading Catullus and Ovid (and you weren't wrong!). In finding the book, I found the violets you pressed between A Draught of Sunshine and Dante's Episode of Paolo and Francesca. Do you remember?_

As Hermes once took to his feathers light,  
When lulled Argus, baffled, swooned and slept,  
So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright  
So played, so charmed, so conquered, so bereft  
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;  
And seeing it asleep, so fled away,  
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,  
Nor unto Tempe, where Jove grieved a day;  
But to that second circle of sad Hell,  
Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw  
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell  
Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,  
Pale were the lips I kissed, and fair the form  
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

_You always did choose the most dramatic ones to read to me!_

_I read your favourite constantly. I can probably recite Bright Star in my sleep. It's such a beautiful poem, and as Combeferre said to me, so fitting for you. I can think of nobody a better fit._

_I will send the flowers with the next letter, I promise. And perhaps more poetry. Maybe even my own; I have been trying to write again, although I've no confidence to show anyone yet. But you were always so kind, it would be best perhaps to send it to you._

_Yours,_  
  
J.  


* * *

  
June seems to segue into July in no time at all, and as promised, I send Courfeyrac many more letters, often with quick couplets and small stanzas of poetry; very little of it is my own, though I had promised, in case he felt it would detract from the beauty of the flowers. Combeferre insists that he would likely be happy just to have correspondence from me, especially so when it was further personalised with my own work, and so I make up my mind to include the piece I have been working on for the past three weeks:

_I can feel people counting the flowing lines on my arms,_   
_Tracing the liquid words I have written there._   
_They read and speak, but do not absorb through the skin_   
_By osmosis, as I have._   
_I know they are looking, that they disapprove;_   
_But I have ink in my veins, and out it flows like melted gold_   
_To write your name in poetry and the stars._

I press marsh cinquefoil in Combeferre's heavy _Gray's Anatomy_ textbook, between plates of the kidney and the corresponding text, and include it in the envelope when I pass it to the postman to deliver as he whistles past the house on his bicycle. Combeferre slips his arms around my waist and smiles.

"Are those his favourites? The flowers?"

"No, his favourites are..." I trail off. I don't remember any more. I don't remember his favourite flowers, or the number of hazel flecks in his left eye - or was it his right? - or the exact place of the tiny scar on his upper lip from a sports accident at school. But looking at Combeferre, I can trace every freckle with my eyes, the constellations of Andromeda and Cassiopeia marked in tiny brown freckles over his cheeks, the dimples in his cheeks, and the rings of gold around his pupils, set in irises like turquoise jewels. "...I think they were lords-and-ladies."

"Do you remember mine?" He asks, his voice teasing, but there's a seriousness in his gaze willing me to get the right answer. I hesitate for a moment, the name on the tip of my tongue, and then, as I catch sight of the book of Shakespeare's sonnets on the bookshelf behind his head, I murmur without thinking, "Poppies."

He smiles and nods. I don't say a word.  


* * *

_  
July 31st, 1917_

_My dearest Jehan,_

_I don't know how to start this letter. I write it in altogether unfamiliar circumstances, to be kept in my pocket, in the hope that some kind soul will post it should the worst happen. We are going over the top this afternoon, and only God in Heaven knows who will come out of it alive._

_I am, for perhaps the last time, in His hands. If I am called, it is my regret that I leave you and my mother and sisters. I will go to Him with the five of you in my mind, and your face my last vision, your name on my lips; you, the best of my life. You'll look after them for me, won't you? Especially Ellie._

_How I love you all! Kiss the girls one more time for me; I can't bear to write another letter like this for them. One is painful enough. And as I sit here waiting, I think of you at home. I mustn't do that. It's hard enough to sit and wait; you know how I fidget! We could be going over at any minute. If the worst should happen, then console yourself with this: when this reaches you, for me there will be no more war, only eternal peace and waiting for you. We shall meet when there's no more parting, my dearest love._

_The moment is here; the order has come, I've no more time to write. Excuse the shaking of my hands (my writing is illegible anyway, as ever.) Goodbye, my darling. May God in all His mercy look over you and protect you... may He in that same mercy do the same for me, today._

_Yours eternally, and with the greatest love,_

_Oliver._


	10. SUMMER 1917 (cont'd.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for: death, violence
> 
> We learn a little more about Grantaire and his reasons for conscientious objection, and hear a lot more about 'Ambrose'. Cookies if you remember who belongs to the first name Ambrose...
> 
> N.B.: The song quoted at the end of this chapter is a traditional English folk song (with the George Farquhar lyrics): [Over the Hills and Far Away](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bs07OvqXp4). (There are multiple versions, one of the most famous being [John Tams' arrangement for the _Sharpe_ TV series](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOeYPpOblAw).) As always, other resources include quotes from other real letters sent by World War One soldiers. If you want to read them for yourselves, I found the majority of them [here](http://www.arthursletters.com/), [here](http://spartacus-educational.com/FWWletters.htm) and [here](http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/debateni/blogs/first-world-war-centenary-letters-from-the-trenches-reveal-horror-faced-by-our-boys-30480316.html)!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again beta'ed by [nolimetangere](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nolimetangere/profile) (laurencombeferre under a renamed pseud), bless her. She puts up with a lot <3 Any mistakes remaining are wholly my own.

Three weeks after the letter arrives, his kit is spread out on my kitchen table. I hold the jacket, smudged with a bright splash of red over the stomach, a small, ragged hole piercing the material front and back, to my face, breathing it in as though I can inhale him, his life, into my body where it can be nurtured and kept safe. Combeferre hangs back, not daring to disturb me in my grief; when I rifle through the pockets, tearing the pouches of khaki wool open until the buttons ricochet like bullets over the flagstone floor; when my fingers close over the collections of letters kept next to his heart, the pressed flowers I sent with my last few missives - even a couple of wilted, bedraggled marigolds for Joly - my screams cannot be held back. They echo out of my mouth, but I am curiously removed from the scene, watching this wan, pale boy clutch an army uniform jacket to his chest and sob as though his heart is breaking. Instead, it is Grantaire who holds me around the waist, buries my head in his shoulder and cradles me like a baby, shielding my head from the sharp edges of the table with one broad hand on the back of my skull.

Grantaire takes me to bed a few minutes later, and I see over his shoulder Combeferre gathering the clothes on the table into a pile before we turn the corner and the door jamb hides him from my view.

When I awake the next morning and head downstairs on shaking legs, there are ashes in the grate and the living kitchen smells like a charnel-house, the scent of the mud that had coated Courfeyrac's uniform. They had smelled of death, not Courfeyrac; I want nothing more to do with them, but I still turn the whole lower floor of our house upside down looking for them. The smell of them is seeping into my throat, choking me, more tears flooding into my eyes; I holler for Combeferre, demanding to know where they are, what he has done with them. A moment of silence hangs querulously between us before his head turns, almost reluctantly, towards the grate, and as realisation sinks in, my hand swings out to impact his cheek with a crack that could shatter the earth beneath our feet.

He stands still, in absolute shock; by contrast, I am wild. As he comes to, he grasps my wrists, holding me against the counter, and I scream into his face, things I would never say under any circumstances other than these. I scream that I hate him, that he has destroyed my life, that he has killed Courfeyrac, that he has killed me; that I will never love him again. The last cuts him deeply, I can see in his face, but the anger blinding me to everything but my own agony swallows the rational part of me whole and it drowns under the rising tide. All I see is the destroyed burnt cloth in the grate, the last piece I will ever have of Courfeyrac, and the man in front of me who has torn that away from me. Combeferre hangs onto my wrists grimly, his own face drawn and pale, streaked with tears, until I wear myself out from straining against his far greater strength, trying to lash out and hit him again and again, physical punches where my much sharper words have landed first.

Cries of "Murderer!" are still ringing in my ears, still tearing their way out of my throat, but I don't feel them, only hear them through the underwater-like thickness of silence. He is shaking, his knuckles white where they encircle my arms, holding me down, and he takes everything I throw at him like a sponge, absorbing every poisonous word deep inside himself. Eventually I fall silent, but he is looking at me as though he has never seen me before, and who can blame him? I have never seen myself like this. I have never seen any other person like this.

He eventually lets me go, and I storm upstairs, grabbing his vest from the floor, his red toothbrush from the bathroom adjacent to our bedroom, his medical textbooks, his bag; everything of his polluting presence from my house, and throw it out onto the front lawn in fits of rage. My physical anger has burned out, but the fury of the betrayal - destroying that which wasn't even his - still courses through me like poison, and I finally live up to my redhead's temper. He follows in confusion, picking up his scattered possessions, not understanding; his glasses, snatched from the bedside table, are flung from the top story window, and shatter amongst Courfeyrac's orange rose bed. I empty every single thing of his from his drawer in my nightstand; papers, candles, a box of matches, a sewing kit full of thread he carries in the breast pocket of his coat for emergency stitches, onto the lawn. At last, I force him - physically force him, shoving him so hard he stumbles down the step and onto the ground, grazing his palms and biting a hole in his bottom lip - out of the door, banging it shut with a foundations-rattling crash and shutting the deadlock behind him.

He knocks on the door, growing more and more desperate, his voice thick and then weak with tears as he pleads with me to let him back in, to forgive him. He professes everything, that he loves me, that he only meant to protect me, that he meant to make things better - but he has done the unforgivable. And to the spectre of Oliver watching me where I am sat in the living room, my hands tearing at my hair as my lungs cough more and more sobs out, I scream equally horrible things - that he has broken me, broken everything. I blame everyone but myself. I am not capable of doing anything else.  
  


* * *

  
Grantaire comes by later, alone, and his knock on the door is uncharacteristically soft, though it still brings me out of the sleepless catatonia in which I have been settled for the past - I have lost all sense of time. It could have been merely hours, or centuries. I am numb.

He lets himself in using Combeferre's key and immediately finds me laid on the settee, my cold cheek against a cushion, shivering. Grantaire settles beside me, his expression full of understanding, and strokes my cheek as I lie there, unable even to cry. He doesn't speak, none of the soft, meaningless words of comfort that Combeferre or Bossuet would undeniably be spouting at me, but instead simply pushes my hair back off my face and traces his thumb over the freckles spread across my nose. He is the first person I have seen since throwing Combeferre out; the first contact I have had since my lover's hands were around my wrists, holding me back from wringing his neck the way my blood was screaming for me to do. Grantaire does not seem afraid; perhaps he realises that in my current state, I don't even have the energy to lift a finger, let alone a hand to strangle him. But perhaps he simply understands; he simply understands that I have long since exhausted any anger.

At last, I sit up, and he leans back, his brown eyes hesitant. He offers me a hand and I take it, allowing myself to be pulled up to stand, supported into the kitchen by his arm around my back. He doesn't mention the conspicuous lack of all Combeferre's clutter around the house, but instead sits me at the kitchen table and clumsily makes a pot full of tea, into which he crushes mint leaves before returning to sit opposite me. He pushes a lank, errant lock out of my eyes and finally speaks, his husky voice sounding painfully loud after so many hours of silence.

"You've obviously not been taking care of yourself, but are you well?" He plays absent-mindedly with a rail ticket from the pile of papers in the centre of the table, Courfeyrac's rail ticket from Whitby when we met him on his leave. The thought of him doesn't even bring the agony back; instead it's as though the pain has grown so great, my mind has self-anaesthetised, to prevent any further damage.

"No."

"And have you spoken to Combeferre?"

"Have you come to plead his case?" I find my voice, weak and scratchy, snaps like a whip on the words. Grantaire fetches the teapot and pours us two mugs, sliding one carefully across the table towards me before taking a sip of his own and wincing as it burns his mouth.

"No. I don't defend his actions in the least. He acted wrongly in burning Courfeyrac's clothes." I nod, and open my mouth, but he holds up his hand. He's not finished. "He acted wrongly, but in what he believed were your best interests. He knows how painful the memories of Courfeyrac are for you, and he thought having a bloodied, muddied uniform rotting on your kitchen table would only make your grief worse." He sighed. "He thought... he must have thought you had forgotten _him_ enough, Jehan. He must have thought that it wouldn't bother you. He doesn't understand that it's impossible to truly _forget_ them."

I don't know what to say in response to that, but he saves me from having to force some platitude or another out by continuing himself.

"I... Ambrose is, is miles away. Somewhere in France, I think, if he still lives. I didn't even go to the station to see him leave, and why would I? Why would I curse the saddest day of his life further with my presence? As if I didn't know; as if I didn't see that I would have been unwelcome, a parasite on time with those he cared about, those he would be sorry to leave...

"And yet there was nothing I wanted more dearly than to be there. To say that last goodbye, if I could. Because god knows I thought - I know - he's not coming back. They never seem to, or not the way they were. So even if I did have him back physically - who knows what person I would get back? Someone who looked like him, maybe, but the voice - the mannerisms - they would have changed. I'm sure of it. I've seen Joly's letters. He wouldn't have been prepared for that, not at sixteen, not at sweet, stupid sixteen as he was.

"We had gone to school together in Halifax. He, of course, was the golden boy - literally, with eyes like sky and hair like buttercups in summer and his voice, oh, his voice was the colour of the ocean, serene on some days, stormy on others. A statue brought to life, Apollo perhaps, or Antinous. Ganymede. Such a beauty, and such a strength to him, the flame that the rest of us moths couldn't help but flutter around, though it burned our wings. He was seduced by the glory of it all, of course, the empty promises of fighting the Kaiser back from our green fields, of rescuing brave little Belgium from his clutches, of changing the world for the better. Another boy whose head had been filled with patriotism and the promises of death it entails, behind the glamour of it. What else could he ever have done? He wouldn't have been able to live with himself if he'd stayed behind. Not like me. And he despised me, of course, for refuting all of the propaganda those idiots at the war office were spewing - all of those leaflets encouraging stupid, beautiful fools like him to go and die in the fields of France for the bloody glory of Britain, _dulce et_ fucking _decorum est_ -"

I know what he means. How could I forget the glowing in Courfeyrac's eyes, the excitement - casting my mind back over the cavernous two years between him leaving and now. How could I ever forget his promises? _I swear to you, Jehan, I will come back. I'll come back and you'll never be able to get rid of me_. As full of hope as any other, but in the end, empty. How could I ever forget that? I take his hand, across the table, and run my thumb over his knuckles. He has stopped, breathing trembling in his lungs, tears pooling along the lower rims of his eyelids, and he takes several deep shuddering breaths. A moment later, his head rises and he is singing, low and quiet through his tears, but in a voice that speaks of all the love and despair in the world.

"Courage, boys, t'is one and ten,  
But we return all gentlemen  
All gentlemen as well as they,  
Over the hills and far away."

I join in when I dare to.   
"O'er the hills and o'er the main,  
To Flanders, Portugal and Spain.  
The King commands and we'll obey  
Over the hills and far away."


	11. NOVEMBER 1918

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: INJURY, DEATH, DROWNING
> 
> Beta'ed again by [nolimetangere](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nolimetangere/profile). Thank you so much, you have been an amazing beta and I am so, so grateful for your help!
> 
> N.B.: The song quoted at the end of this chapter is a traditional English folk song (with John Tams' lyrics): [Over the Hills and Far Away](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XhMA7NuLpQ#t=6022). (There are multiple versions, one of the most famous being this one, John Tams' arrangement for the Sharpe TV series.) As always, other resources include quotes from other real letters sent by World War One soldiers. If you want to read them for yourselves, I found the majority of them [here](http://www.arthursletters.com/), [here](http://spartacus-educational.com/FWWletters.htm) and [here](http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/debateni/blogs/first-world-war-centenary-letters-from-the-trenches-reveal-horror-faced-by-our-boys-30480316.html)!

**NOVEMBER 1918**

The Armistice is declared the day after what would have been Courfeyrac's nineteenth birthday. The village is an uproar of flags, of cries of joy as neighbours rush to one another's houses declaring that "It's over, it's over, the blasted war is over!" People whose sons, husbands, brothers will be coming back. I am not bitter; I feel the slightest lessening of the leaden ache in my heart, ready to see the village full of young men again, of hopefully familiar faces. Ready to see the boys come back from the front, whole and in the best of health possible, given the horrors of where they have come from. I take my hat and scarf from the pegs by the front door, and walk down the garden path, intending to head to Bossuet's to share the good news. He is already there, tears of joy streaming down his face, and he grasps blissfully at my shoulders, beaming.

"Iwan is coming home! Jehan, Iwan is coming home!"

My happiness is, for him, genuine. I beam at him, let out great whoops of excitement to match his own, and laugh as he capers like a jester, flinging the newspaper he's holding - with the blaring headline, _ARMISTICE ANNOUNCED!_ \- into the air and catching it again, laughing for pure joy. I throw my arms around him and squeeze, resisting the urge to pick him up and whirl him in a circle, as I can imagine Grantaire doing the moment he sees him. I am sobered for a moment in thinking of our friend; how must he be feeling, not even knowing where his Ambrose has been in service, let alone whether or not he has survived?

"I'm overjoyed, my friend, you know I am. At last! And it's about time, I have to say, that you saw him again. But might we drop in on Grantaire also? He has someone at the Front himself, and I doubt he's yet heard, despite all the celebrations."

Bossuet nods - "Of course! Of course!" - and babbles, in his ebullient manner, about Joly and his return the whole way across the village to Grantaire's small, stoneworked cottage in the very furthest outreaches of the community. I knock on the door, and he comes to answer after a short while, his hair mussed and still in his nightshirt, although thankfully with a pair of trousers haphazardly pulled up beneath it. He's barefoot.

Bossuet throws himself, overjoyed, at him, and Grantaire laughs, sharing in his excitement as I knew he would. Despite Grantaire's own disillusionment with the war, he lives for his friends and their joy, and looking at Bossuet now, I doubt anybody could help but be drawn into his pure delight at the prospect of his friend's return. The soldiers, we learn from the newspaper clutched in our friend's hand, will be coming home over the next few weeks, with the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry train arriving into Scarborough at eleven o'clock on the 21st. Three days is all that stands between Bossuet and Joly; three days stand between the village and a return to normalcy.

There is, however, an insidious little voice at the back of my mind reminding me that no matter how we might wish it, there is a chance that Joly will not be one of those stepping off the train and onto Scarborough's platform. Grantaire, glancing at me, seems to share my trepidation.  
  


* * *

  
The train pulls into the station with a metallic scream of brakes and a great belch of black smoke pluming into the air. There is an unseasonable bright sunshine, but the electric buzz of anticipation, of families desperate to see their beloved men returned to them is what makes the day seem truly alive after the grey of the past four years. The doors begin to open, heads - clad in khaki caps - begin to emerge, and people burst into tears around us, swarming forwards to welcome the boys into clutching, smothering arms. All around us are women sobbing into husband's jackets, being dragged into harsh, desperate kisses that speak of years of separation, but I am forcibly dragged back to the arrival of Courfeyrac into Whitby; everywhere I look, I see the same glassy, confused expression in the men's eyes, something that frightens me and makes me pity, with all my heart, those who expect to have their sons back in one whole piece. That look, as it had with Courfeyrac, speaks of something broken.

Nevertheless, I smile as a woman beside me rushes forward to greet a loved one, a handsome young man in an officer's cap with a neatly-shaved chin and the beginnings of a moustache. Despite his rank, he barely looks over seventeen, one of the desperate last-ditch conscripted soldiers brought in to flesh out the army enough for another of Field Marshal Haig's great pushes. Perhaps the one that won us the war. But the joy is only an echo, short-lived. I do not feel it personally; this boy does not affect me. This boy is not Courfeyrac, nor Joly, nor Grantaire's Ambrose; I feel nothing upon his return.

Then there is a hoarse cry from beside me - uttered not by Bossuet but, unbelievably, _Grantaire_ \- a hoarse, incredulous shout of "Ambrose!" and a ragged, angelically blonde head turns, several feet down the platform. Grantaire bursts through the crowds like a bullet loosed from a gun, and almost bowls the poor chap over in his disbelief to see him dismount the train. Bossuet turns to me, confused, and I explain quietly that this is Ambrose, Grantaire's man at the front, who we have heard so little about. But from the expression on his face, I cannot believe that Ambrose hated Grantaire so much as our friend would have had us believe - instead, as tears swim in his eyes and he clutches Grantaire's hand like a lifeline, as though it is the one true thing in the world - I think that he looks like Odysseus, washed up on the shores of Ithaka and seeing Penelope there, waiting for him on the beaches.

Bossuet heads away to search for Joly, and I slowly approach Grantaire and his friend, unwilling to intrude on a moment so private. Grantaire is ecstatic, but quietly; instead, he simply holds Ambrose's hand and turns to introduce me with an, "Enjolras, this is Jehan. My friend."

Enjolras - Ambrose -'s eyes widen, and he bites his lip, his expression switching from desperation to agony. The penny drops, for me, slowly. This is the Private Enjolras of Oliver's letters. A small world after all.

He's ragged, thin as a rake, with haunted dark circles under brilliantly blue eyes. They don't focus on my face, instead staring emptily past me, and I realise with a jolt of shock that he is has been blinded.

"I'm so sorry for your loss," he says haltingly, every inch of his body screaming that he is looking for clues as to how I am taking his presence, as a survivor, in front of me, whilst my own dear one is buried somewhere in the cold French ground beneath a wooden cross. Instead of pain, I feel relief. Someone I know - even though we've never before met - has returned from the war. It gives me hope for Bossuet and Joly, who must have reunited further down the platform and be taking a moment for themselves.

"I... I served with Courfeyrac, I gave him - gave him my mask during a gas attack, rescued him from the wire when he fell during the Push..." He turns his head towards Grantaire helplessly, only to receive no comforting response; Grantaire is watching me. "I'm... I'm so sorry I couldn't do more."

"I wouldn't have asked it of you," I reply gently, trying to keep the tremors out of my own voice. "I'm just grateful that... that you didn't leave him there."

"I would never." Enjolras shakes his head. "I _could_ never have left him there."

Bossuet rejoins us at that moment, his brows drawn, face pale with worry. People are beginning to leave the station, and the train has long since left. A leaden ball sinks in my stomach, and I see the same shock, the same instinctive denial of the inevitable pain to follow, on Grantaire's face. The two of us have realised, long before Bossuet, that Joly is not here.

"Oh!" Bossuet spots Enjolras, and smiles brightly, if a little forced. "I'm Bossuet, Grantaire's friend."

This seems to be a breaking point for Enjolras, and he lets out a little moan before collapsing on top of his luggage, shaking, breathing hard. Grantaire immediately drops down beside him, rubbing a hand over his back, sending panicked glances behind me, where I see - not wholly unwelcome - the sight of Combeferre stepping through the dispersing crowds to help with the situation. He kneels beside Enjolras, murmuring soft words I can't hear, and passes him a bottle of water, encouraging him to drink and try to calm himself. Enjolras gulps down the water as though drowning, and the station is entirely empty before he can bring himself to raise his head.

"Where's Joly?" Bossuet asks me, desperate.

"In France," comes Enjolras' painfully quiet answer, his eyes - deep blue, blue as the sea - faraway not only in their blindness, but their expression; in his mind, he is clearly with Joly, far away where we, sheltered as we have been from the war, cannot hope to reach.

"Where in France? Will he be home soon?"

"He's not coming home, my friend. I'm so sorry." I have never heard another human being sound like this. As though everything, every last breath of strength, has been sapped from his body.

"He... It was before I got shot, before I went blind. There was a great push over the top, and the three of them, they all fell. First Courfeyrac, shot whilst trying to advance towards enemy lines. Only a hundred feet away, barely worth the effort... Courfeyrac, and the guns went silent for a moment, and people thought they had stopped, thought it was over. We were the last trench sent forward, we were the only ones left. Feuilly, he headed up and over the wire with me to get him. They opened fire on us, and Feuilly got hit, he dropped like a stone and I could smell the smoke, the stench of the mud, the blood we were wading through to reach Courfeyrac - I was only grazed, so I dropped too, pretended, hoping the pair of them would last long enough for me to get them back to safety when it got dark, so they could get treatment, so they could maybe survive it... Joly was part of the field ambulance, he saw the three of us go down and insisted he needed to fetch us back, couldn't let us fall into the hands of the Germans. They stopped firing when they saw him coming, and I don't blame them. The sun was starting to set, it was blood red behind him, and the smoke was billowing out behind him like wings - like an avenging angel coming for them for mowing us down. He was on his own.

"He dragged the pair of them up - Feuilly could just about stand, but Courfeyrac... Courfeyrac had passed, he'd been got in the stomach, it was just too bad and he wouldn't've... wouldn't've made it anyway, not with all that mud soaking into it, it's the mud that gets most of them that get wounded, the mud and the infection. I picked him up anyway, started dragging him back to the trench where we could lay him down and sort him out, bring him to the hospital where they'd lay him out back and get his affairs in order and things. Joly was helping Feuilly away, trying to head for where the field ambulance had got to, but they started shelling us, and the pair of them - Joly tripped over someone - something - he fell, the pair of them, into a shell-hole, and the mud - after all that rain, it was like quicksand, just sucks you down - the pair of them drowned in it before we even got a chance, before the smoke had cleared enough to see where they were, to rescue them..."

Bossuet was white as a sheet, shaking his head, refusing to believe what he was hearing. "You're wrong." He insisted, trembling, and Enjolras just stared past him sadly, twisting the cuffs of his coat between his fingers, worrying at the frayed material. Combeferre laid his hand on Bossuet's shoulder, tender and gentle - ever the same Combeferre - and caught him as he collapsed into his arms, clinging to the lapels of his coat in despair. My heart ached for him more than most - even my joy at Grantaire, the one who least expected to see anyone return from the front, having his friend back, didn't soothe the agony of sympathetic loss for Bossuet. All of us, in that moment, mourned Joly more than our respective persons. He had been the symbol of hope for us all, and with Enjolras' words, that hope had crashed to the ground like a bomb being dropped.

"I'm sorry," was all Enjolras could say, and Grantaire picked up his case, gently, subtly leading him away, leaving us to console Bossuet in his grief.  
  


* * *

  
Courfeyrac was buried at Louvencourt, amongst thousands of others. The rows and rows of crosses will be the lasting image I have of him in my old age, that and the kisses, flavoured with youth and summer, in the meadows near our home. I haven't brought him with me, my new partner. I felt that it would be wrong, to bring him to something so personal as this is for me. I kneel in front of Courfeyrac's grave, tracing the letters with my fingers. He's buried under his name, of course, name, rank and regiment, but also under the words of Keats' poem he loved so well:  _Bright star, would that I were steadfast as thou art_ .

I have brought them with me, plucked from the fields nearby, still scarred and pitted with the blasts of shells and seamed with slowly-filling trenches. The poppies. Bright as blood, bright as Joly's last sunset. Four of them, for the four that had fallen. Courfeyrac is the only one they've found; Courfeyrac is the only one with a lasting memorial here in this graveyard or any other. So here, for him and the rest of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry's losses: Courfeyrac, Feuilly, Joly and Bahorel.

_Through smoke and fire and shot and shell,_  
 _And to the very walls of hell,_  
 _But we shall stand and we shall stay_  
 _Over the hills and far away._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been thinking, as well, of doing spin-off one shots from the perspectives of other characters - maybe the first chapter from Courfeyrac's point of view, or Chapter 10 from Combeferre's - if that's something people would be interested in, let me know! Other than that, you have been the most amazing, supportive audience and I am so, so grateful for all of the lovely feedback you've given me. Thank you all so much. ♥


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